"Consigned to Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cleland Jane K.)

CHAPTER THREE

Max gripped my shoulder. “Josie,” he said, keeping his eyes on Alverez, “don’t say a word.”

“But I can explain,” I protested.

“Say nothing.”

He looked determined and grim, and I shivered. I nodded slightly, signaling that I’d do as he asked.

Max squeezed my shoulder again. I couldn’t tell whether he was offering support or thanking me for doing as he instructed. He turned back toward Alverez, picked up his pen, and queried, “Fingerprints on the knife?” His voice was calm, his tone pleasant.

I kept my eyes lowered and sat, silent and still.

“Yeah,” Alverez said, nodding. “That’s right.”

“Where?”

“On the handle.”

“Distinct? Complete?”

Alverez glanced at his notes. “According to the tech guys, there wasn’t enough ridge detail for an ID from most of the prints. But there was one clear index print from Josie’s right hand. A sixteen-point match.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means your print is on the knife. For sure.”

Max patted my arm to calm me. “It sounds as if the knife had been wiped, but not thoroughly.”

“Apparently,” Alverez agreed.

“Okay, then. Would you excuse us for a minute? I want to talk to my client privately.”

“Sure,” Alverez said. His chair made a loud scraping noise as he pushed back. The door closed behind him with the same disconcerting click I’d heard yesterday. Max cleared his throat and flipped to a fresh page on his yellow-lined pad.

“Okay, Josie,” Max said, his pen at the ready. “Explain why your fingerprints are on the knife.”

I looked down at my lap, unable to think in sentences. Now that I had permission to speak, all that came to mind were words of outraged protest. I wanted to shout and rail and pound the table.

“Now, Josie. We don’t have a lot of time.”

His admonition helped me focus. “Do I need to whisper?” I asked, remembering Max’s instruction that I was to whisper when I wanted to talk to him privately.

“No,” he said. “When we’re alone like this, you’re free to talk naturally.”

“Okay.” I paused to think. “It was Thursday of last week,” I said, “the second time I was there. We’d settled on our next appointment and I was saying good-bye when Mr. Grant asked me to have some tea.” I shrugged and flipped a hand. “So I did. We went into the kitchen. I thought it was very sweet of him. I cut the cake.” I shuddered. “That must have been the knife that was used to… that must have been the knife.”

“How was it that you cut the cake?” Max asked, keeping me focused.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Max asked, tapping his pen on the pad, “did you take the knife from him? Did he hand it to you?”

“I took it from the knife block on the counter.”

“Why would you do that? I mean, you don’t just walk into someone’s kitchen and grab a knife.”

“No, no,” I exclaimed. “It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t grab the knife. When we got to the kitchen, Mr. Grant had everything ready.”

“In what way?” Max asked.

“Well, he’d set out cups and saucers, teaspoons, some little plates, and a Bundt cake. He’d brewed real tea and the pot was sitting on the table along with a sugar bowl.”

“Okay. Then what happened?”

“He started opening drawers and pawing around, looking, he said, for the cake knife. Finally, he said he couldn’t find it. He wasn’t upset or anything. I remember we spoke about how odd it is that things disappear on their own. I told him about my father. How when I was growing up and something was misplaced-you know what I mean-when the can opener that lived in the top drawer was found, after an exhaustive search, in the bottom drawer, well, my father used to blame it on Oscar, the poltergeist. Mr. Grant laughed and said that made perfect sense and explained a lot of things.”

Max nodded. “Then what?”

“Then I said it didn’t matter that he couldn’t find the cake knife, that any knife would do. But he wanted to use the right knife. He said his wife was a stickler about things like that, using the right fork for the pickles and the right spoon for the jelly. But finally he gave up. He asked me to take a knife from the block on the counter. I took one randomly. We laughed about it because the knife I selected was huge! It had, I don’t know, maybe an eight-inch blade.” I looked away for a moment, remembering Mr. Grant’s jolly laugh.

“Mr. Grant made a joke,” I said softly, “saying that he’d paid full price for the Bundt cake, so it had better not be stale and need a knife that big to cut it.”

Max shook his head sympathetically. “And after you had tea?”

“After we were done,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I helped him put the dishes in the dishwasher and I took a sponge and wiped down the table. Then I washed the knife by hand.” I thought back, remembering standing at the oversized sink and enjoying the ocean view. “I watched the waves awhile as I dried the knife, not well, apparently, and put it back in the slot in the block.”

I began to tear up again. Using my middle fingers, I pushed the skin under my eyes until the tears stopped. I sniffed and wiped them away with the backs of my wrists. Max patted my shoulder while he made some notes.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t want to mislead you, Josie. Chief Alverez obviously considers you a viable suspect.”

“But, I swear-”

Max raised a hand to stop me. “Look at it from his point of view. You were there. The knife was there. And your fingerprints are on it. As near as I can tell, his focus now will be to figure out a motive. He’s wondering why you might have killed Mr. Grant. You know, how it might benefit you to have him dead. Until he can answer that question, probably he won’t charge you with murder.”

I felt light-headed. Sitting in a police station listening to a matter-of-fact description of my vulnerability felt surrealistic. Someone was thinking of charging me with murder. I shook my head in disbelief.

“But if he can answer the motive question in a way that satisfies him,” Max continued, “well, we need to be prepared in case he does charge you.”

“It’s inconceivable,” I said.

“Expect the best, Josie, but prepare for the worst.”

My father used to say that, and hearing Max speak those words momentarily reassured me, but that comfortable delusion disintegrated into bone-deep sadness immediately followed by waves of overwhelming dread. Panic suddenly threatened to overtake reason. I gripped the table and blinked away tears of frustration and anger. I couldn’t risk thinking of my dad. Not in my current situation. Forcing myself to breathe calmly, I pushed thoughts of him aside, and swallowed. When I could speak again, I asked, “So, now what?”

“Now we try to be smarter than Alverez and get the answer first. You tell me. How do you benefit with Mr. Grant dead?”

I shook my head. “I don’t. Think about it-with Mr. Grant dead, I’ve lost a huge deal. A career-making deal.”

“Unless the deal was already lost. Unless when you went there yesterday morning, Mr. Grant let you in and told you he’d changed his mind for some reason. And you lost your temper.”

I stared, speechless. I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came. What he said made sense, and it terrified me into silence.

“Well?” Max prodded.

“I don’t know what to say,” I answered, my voice cracking. “It’s logical, but it didn’t happen.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Of course not. How can I prove something didn’t happen? We were due to sign the letter of agreement yesterday. I told you what happened when I got there.”

“I understand. But it’s going to be a problem.” He tapped his pen a few times on the table, staring into the middle distance, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “Probably Alverez is looking into it right now. If he can find evidence that you lost the account, he’s got a motive.”

“What should I do?” I asked quietly.

“Tell the truth. Just like you’ve been doing. Keep repeating that you didn’t do it. Alverez is a good man, Josie. He’s not looking to railroad you.”

I nodded.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I answered.

“Let’s call Alverez in,” Max said. “Remember… tell the truth. And the shorter your answers, the better. Explain the whole thing, including how you came to take the knife.”

I felt dazed and only half listened as Alverez asked if it would be all right to tape my explanation about the knife for the record, and Max agreed. I watched as Alverez plugged in the tape recorder and wiggled the cord, tugging gently, making certain it was secure. It was as if I were watching a movie. It seemed to have nothing to do with me. Alverez pointed to the machine.

“Are you ready?” he asked me.

I looked at Max and he gestured that I could begin. Alverez spoke the date and time, gave our names, and told me to begin. As I spoke, I kept my eyes on Alverez, alert for clues to his thinking. He nodded encouragingly, and smiled a little when I spoke about Oscar, the poltergeist. I felt relieved, convinced that he believed me, and that therefore I was well on my way to clearing my name.

“So let me be sure I understand,” Alverez said when I’d finished. “You had a cup of tea and, directed by Mr. Grant, you put the cups, saucers, and plates in the dishwasher. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I answered. “That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you put the knife in the dishwasher, too?”

His handsome face gave away nothing. He either flat-out thought I was lying or he was trying to trap me. Fear morphed into anger. “You don’t put good knives in the dishwasher,” I answered sharply. “You wash them by hand.”

“Did Mr. Grant tell you that?” Alverez asked, unmoved by my tone.

“No,” I countered. “He didn’t need to. Everyone knows that.”

Alverez paused to think. I heard the soft whirr of the tape recorder and a heavy thud from outside as a truck lumbered by.

Finally, Max asked, “Is there anything else? Can we go now?” Alverez stopped the recorder. “How about if we plan on meeting again in the morning?” he asked Max.

I touched Max’s elbow before he could respond, and whispered, “No. I have to get ready for my regular Saturday tag sale and the Wilson auction preview starts tomorrow.”

“What hours will you be working?”

“I’ll start setting up the tag sale around seven. The auction preview starts at ten and runs until nine in the evening. Both the auction and the tag sale are on Saturday.”

“That makes for a couple of long days, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. Calling them long days was an understatement. I’d be running full tilt from dawn until late evening both days.

“Keep your cell phone on and with you at all times. Even when you sleep. Agreed?” he asked, his urgency palpable even in a whisper.

“Okay,” I said.

“No excuses? I’m about to promise our availability. Don’t make a liar out of me. Okay?”

“I promise. My cell phone will be with me always.” I gripped the edge of the table, sort of angry, but mostly intent and ready to respond.

“Tomorrow won’t work for us,” Max said to Alverez, and explained my situation. “I’ll keep my cell phone on, and Josie and I have arranged it so I can reach her on an as-needed basis. I think you have my number, but just in case, here.” He reached into his jacket pocket for a business card and slid it across the table.

Alverez picked up the card, but looked at me. I met his eyes, trying to look nonthreatening. I couldn’t read him at all. I realized that he might be weighing whether he should arrest me on the spot or let me go, thinking that maybe if he gave me enough rope I’d hang myself. Nonetheless, I was relieved when he turned to Max, and said, “Okay.” To me, he asked, “You won’t be leaving the area, right?”

“No,” I replied, swallowing. “I’ll be here.”

Alverez nodded and stood up. “All right, then.”

Cathy wasn’t in sight as we passed through the central room, but two young men in uniform were. They stared at me as I walked by. I was glad to escape to the parking lot, but didn’t feel free until Max had driven us away and the police station was out of sight.

I watched the ocean as we drove. The tide was high, so I could see waves roll in through breaks in the dunes. “Max…” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve had a thought…”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe I’m not the only antique dealer that Grant contacted after all. I thought I was, but maybe the motive you suggested-losing the Grant deal-is true, but applies to someone else, not me.”

“That’s interesting,” Max agreed. “How much money are we talking about, anyway? For whoever got the deal.”

“Who knows? Mr. Grant wanted to sell items that would have fetched at least hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. Maybe more than a million. To a dealer that represented tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions. Plus a worldwide reputation as a power player.”

“Sounds like motive enough to kill.”

“Yeah,” I acknowledged. “Well, I wonder if mine were the only fingerprints they found.”

“On the knife?”

“Yes, on the knife. Or anywhere. Under the furniture, I mean. Think about it… if they found prints from another antique dealer, auctioneer, or appraiser in places where only a professional would look, well, that implies that I wasn’t the only person with something to lose. Wouldn’t that person have a strong motive to have killed Mr. Grant if he thought that I was about to close the deal?”

“Makes sense, Josie. Besides fingerprints, there’s another way of tracking a competitor down. Phone records. To see if Mr. Grant had contacted anyone else. If he called another dealer, or if another dealer called him.”

“That’s a great idea!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “Maybe we could ask Chief Alverez to look at the records for us.”

“The timing’s wrong. I’ll make a note of both ideas, but I think we should hold off.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” Max said and glanced at me. “In both cases, the fingerprints and the phone logs, what if the answer is no?”

“No” hadn’t occurred to me because I knew I was innocent. And if I was innocent, someone else was guilty. “Good point,” I acknowledged. “But should I just sit here and not defend myself?”

“From a strategic perspective, yes, you shouldn’t defend yourself, because you haven’t been charged with anything. If and when you are, we’ll hire private detectives to investigate. I don’t want to imply that our relationship with Alverez is adversarial, but it’s always a mistake to volunteer information. Remember what I told you? Short answers.”

“Thank you, Max,” I said. Having thought of a line of investigation that Max considered worth noting boosted my spirits a little. It was one thing to theoretically expect the best and prepare for the worst. It was another thing altogether to simply sit back and wait for Alverez to make his judgment about my guilt or innocence. Maybe Max was right and it wasn’t time to act, but still, I was getting prepared for the worst. I’d be ready to act if I needed to do so. All my adult life, I’d found that the only reliable antidote to feelings of powerlessness was action.

We drove in silence for several minutes. As we passed the Grant house, shielded from sight by dense boxwood hedges, I said, “I wonder who gets the contract now.”

“The decision will be made, presumably, by whoever inherits. Whether to sell at all, and if so, to whom.”

“How can we find out who that is?” I asked Max.

“That’s one question we can follow up on right away. I’ll ask Epps.”

I lifted and lowered my shoulders a few times, trying to relax my muscles a bit. It had been as if I’d been locked in a cold, dark, windowless room, and now I felt a surge of relief, as if the door had only been latched after all, and outside it was sunny and warm. Max and I, we had a plan. It was the first bit of hope I’d felt since Alverez had walked into my warehouse two days earlier, and it felt damn good.

But I remained wary. While it felt damn good to have a plan of action, I had no illusions. Hope, I repeated to myself, but also prepare for disappointment.

I got back to the warehouse just before two. Gretchen was talking on the phone with the receiver wedged between her shoulder and ear, her head tilted, and her red hair spilling over the unit, falling nearly to her waist. She looked uncomfortable, but she sounded as relaxed and pleasant as ever. I stood and waited while she finished.

“Yes, the preview is still on,” she said. “No, absolutely no change. Uh-huh. Right. Registered bidders only. Right. Yes, sir. The auction is on Saturday, starting at two.”

Listening to Gretchen’s cheery words reminded me of the first time I met her. It was a Thursday, the day after I’d closed on the warehouse. When I drove up at eight in the morning, she was waiting at my front door wearing a navy blue suit, white blouse, and heels, clutching a Seacoast Star opened to the classifieds with my ad circled in pink highlighter. Observing her as I walked from my car and noting her outfit, I’d hoped she was a prospective client. She gave me a dazzling smile, and said, “Hi, are you Josie Prescott? I’m here for the job. I wanted to be first. Am I first?”

I hired her forty-five minutes later, an oddly impulsive act for a systematic, research-oriented sort like me. Especially since she was reticent to the point of mysterious about her background. She volunteered that she moved to Portsmouth from a small town upstate, but when I asked which one, she rolled her eyes, and said, “Oh please, I escaped, let’s leave it at that.” And gave me another blinding smile.

Awed at her dictation and typing skills as much as her light-hearted, engaging charm, and her can-do attitude toward customer service, I speculated on whether she was too good to be true. I told her that I would certainly want to invite her back for a second interview while thinking that I needed to check her references. “I’ll look forward to seeing you next week,” I started to say.

She stopped me cold when her smile faded away. Her eyes became mournful, and she reached across the desk and touched my arm. “Hire me. I’ll help your company grow. Really. I will. I’m honest and hardworking. You won’t be sorry. Offer me the job now. Please.”

“Why? What’s your hurry?”

“I’ve just moved. I need a job and this is the one I want.”

I paused, thinking. She seemed perfect. “Why did you move, Gretchen? Is there something I should know?” I asked quietly, watching her for any sign of deception.

She shook her head. “No, nothing. It’s just that I need a fresh start.”

“Why here? I’m an antique appraiser. Not the best place for a fresh start.”

“Why not? Why isn’t it a good place for a fresh start? You’re starting a new business. It’s a perfect place for a fresh start.”

Warning myself that I’d probably regret it, I offered her the job and she accepted it. Two years later, I knew that hiring her was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. And I still didn’t know where she’d lived before she’d arrived on my doorstep.

She hung up the phone.

I said, “Hey, kiddo. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. How about you? Are you okay?” she asked me.

“A little the worse for wear, but okay. How are things here?”

Gretchen smiled a little. “Busy. In a good way. Sasha’s done with the catalogue and wants you to review it so we can get it copied and bound.” She reached to a corner of her desk and handed me a thick document held together with a black clamp. “We have more than a hundred people registered for the preview and the phone keeps ringing with inquiries.”

“More than a hundred?” I asked, slightly awed. “That’s almost double the number we had last time. Wow. The Wilson stuff is good, but it’s not that good.”

Gretchen nodded and looked away. “I think there may be a curiosity factor at work here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, several reporters are among the registered bidders. I’m guessing it’s about the, you know, the Grant situation.”

I froze for a moment, then brushed hair out of my eyes. I nodded. “Yeah, probably that’s it. Have any reporters called to talk to you?”

“Yes. I keep saying ‘No comment,’ and eventually they go away.”

“Good,” I responded. “Keep it up.” After a pause I added, “Thanks, Gretchen.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Change of subject. We lost two regular part-timers for Saturday. The tag sale. Mae and Gary.”

“Why?”

“The flu.”

“Oh, boy. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

“I’ve already called Peter at Temp Pros.”

“Thanks, Gretchen. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She looked embarrassed. “It’s nothing,” she said. “So. What’s the latest news?”

“Well,” I said, trying for light and frothy, “let me put it this way… it’s pretty clear that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She nodded with a sympathetic grimace, but before she could comment, the phone rang.

“Where are Eric and Sasha now?” I asked as she reached for the unit.

“Helping with the auction setup. Along with the temp guys. They’ve been at it since about noon.”

“Good. I’ll go there now. Anything else I should know?”

She shook her head as she picked up the phone and answered with her usual upbeat “Prescott’s. May I help you?”

It was another inquiry about attending the auction. Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled at such a stellar response. But the circumstances were anything but normal. Instead of pride and pleasure, I felt edgy discomfort. Some of the people coming to the auction preview tomorrow would be there not to buy but to judge me, and maybe even to intrude. I could picture ambitious young television reporters, with their earnest crews wielding spotlights, pushing microphones in my face. It made me feel anxious, vulnerable, and cranky.

I walked across my warehouse to an area on the left, passing the sliding dividers that, with a push of a button, would segregate the far corner from the rest of the space. When the partitions were in place, it became an elegant, spacious room, not a concrete cavern. The design and layout were my own, and I thought it was a clever way to transform an oversized industrial space into an attractive and utilitarian venue on an as-needed basis. Clever, but expensive.

I stepped onto the maroon industrial carpeting that covered the concrete floor and served to subdue the sounds that echoed through the rest of the warehouse. I made my way to the low platform at the front, skirted in black polyester. A podium faced the seating area. The outside concrete walls, to my right and ahead of me, were whitewashed. Acres of burgundy brocade hung from big black wrought-iron rings dangling from two-inch pipes I’d had painted black and that stretched from the stage to the far back wall and along the back wall from the far corner to the divider. Tomorrow, we’d slide the dividing walls into place, converting this section of the warehouse into an antique haven, suitably decorated and appropriately quiet. Everything looked fine, except that we’d need to add more seats.

I spotted Sasha directing Eric and three temporary helpers as they positioned the Wilson goods into numbered, roped-off areas against what would be, once the dividers were in place tomorrow, the inside wall of the room. Looking at it now, the placement seemed arbitrary, a fifteen-foot-deep channel filled with antiques, positioned some fifty feet in from the outside wall.

“Over here.” Sasha directed two of the men, pointing to a space labeled 12. They carried a heavy, Russian-made, nineteenth-century cedar hope chest fitted with brass hardware into the area. Sasha consulted a three-ring binder containing, I knew, a copy of the Wilson listing, confirming that the hope chest’s placement in area 12 matched its catalogue entry as lot 12.

Waving hello, she closed the binder and joined me in an empty aisle as Eric ensured that the chest was plumb to the line where the wall would be. “We’re making good progress,” she said.

“I can see you are,” I said with a smile.

Eric took a lighthouse quilt from the chest, a remarkable work dating from the eighteenth century, probably crafted by a local teenager, and draped it over a black metal free-standing rod. Sasha went over and smoothed it out so the bits and pieces of cotton resolved themselves into a landscape of accurate perspective and awe-inspiring detail. Tiny seagulls, created from peanut-sized white and gray scraps of cloth and sewn with nearly invisible stitches, seemed to flutter across the pale blue sky. It made a dramatic backdrop for the hope chest.

My mother would have loved it. She admired excellence in craftsmanship in all things. I learned business from my father, but I gauged quality with my mother’s eyes. Well could I remember the hours we spent at museums.

I could picture us as we stood together in the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, gazing, speechless, at the glass flower collection. At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, we whispered about the odd, eclectic mixture of treasures on display. And when I was eleven, we traveled to New York to visit museums. We spent the first two days at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I stared, awed and thrilled, at one after another masterpiece.

I recall pointing, excited, to the cat in George Caleb Bingham’s 1845 painting Fur Traders Descending the Missouri; remarking on the vivid yellows and reds on the earliest-known Nepalese painting on cloth, dating from around 1100; and wondering how a statue created almost five thousand years ago could still exist. Every moment was filled with wonder, but it was on the third day that my life was changed forever.

With a wintry wind blowing from the east, we kept our heads down and hurried along the Midtown streets until we reached the Museum of Modern Art.

“Oh, Josie,” my mother had said, staring through moist eyes at Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to spend your life surrounded by such magnificence?”

“Yes,” I answered, and then and there, I silently vowed that I would find a way to work with items of great beauty.

Looking again at the quilt, I felt a spurt of pride. If only my mother could see me now, I thought, and smiled.

“Hey, Josie,” Eric called, and walked toward me. “Doesn’t it look great?”

“More than great,” I said. “You guys are incredible! How much more do you have to do?”

“Four more lots,” Eric said, dragging his arm along his forehead, catching dripping sweat. “Not bad.”

“Not bad at all. Good job, guys.” I added the instruction about the chairs, gave Eric a thumbs-up, promised Sasha I’d sign off on the catalogue ASAP, and left.

As I approached the spiral staircase that led to my private office, an area once used to monitor manufacturing processes, Gretchen paged me.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I walked into her office.

“Max Bixby wants you on line two,” she said.

I picked up the phone, and said, “This is Josie.”

“What’s your fax number?” Max asked without even saying hello.

I told him, adding, “What’s the big deal? Gretchen could have told you the number.”

“Epps faxed something over to me and I want you to see it right away. For your eyes only.”

“Okay,” I responded, attentive and worried. I heard the fax machine kick on. “Do you want me to call you back after I’ve looked at it?” I asked.

“No,” Max said. “I’ll hold.”

The phone rang in back of me and Gretchen answered it as usual. It was another inquiry, but I barely registered the interchange. I stood silent and intent, watching the fax machine drop a one-page document into the receiving tray.

I was holding a copy of a letter, dated Friday of last week, the day after I’d shared Bundt cake with Mr. Grant. It was signed by Britt Epps, written on his law firm’s letterhead, and my heart skipped more than a beat as I read the text introducing Barney Troudeaux to Nathaniel Grant.

“I’ve read it,” I said.

“Do you know Barney Troudeaux?” Max asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Of course.”

“He’s an antique dealer based in Exeter, right?”

“Right.”

“What do you know about him?”

I forced myself to ignore my personal feelings about good ol’ Barney and his bitch-queen wife. Instead I reported the truth as perceived by the vast majority in the industry. “Barney is very well respected. I mean, he’s the head of the NHAAS.”

“That’s that industry association you mentioned?” Max asked.

“Right,” I said, and shrugged. “It’s pretty prestigious.”

“So Epps recommending him wouldn’t be out of line?”

“Hell, no. It would be an obvious choice. Not a good one, necessarily, but certainly it would be low risk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, between you, me, and the gate post, Barney is lazy. His research is cursory, so he misses a lot of opportunities to maximize his clients’ profits.”

“So he’s reputable but incompetent?” Max asked.

“I wouldn’t say he’s incompetent. He’s knowledgeable and a terrific negotiator. The problem is he’s lazy. He delegates research to other people, usually his wife, who knows nothing but acts as if she knows everything, and he never checks or corrects her work.”

“How do you know?”

“Because on two separate occasions I’ve bought items he’s sold, not because they were sort of a bargain and I knew I could mark them up and make a decent profit but because they were inaccurately described in his catalogues, and I got killer deals. I sure wouldn’t want to be a client of his, but I doubt you’d find a client who’d say so, or even one who discovered the truth. He’s great with people. His clients love him. But from where I sit, it’s as if he doesn’t care as much about the value of the items he’s entrusted with as he does about getting the deal.”

“Why would Epps recommend him?”

I made a noise involuntarily, a small snort of contempt. “Because he’s low risk. Don’t you see? He’s the prez of a major industry association. He’s personable. Forgive my cynicism, but from a lawyer like Epps’s point of view, it doesn’t matter how good a job an appraiser does. All that matters is that his client never comes back with a complaint. But I got to ask you, Max, what does all of this have to do with the price of eggs in China?”

“Well,” he said after a pause, “here’s the thing, Josie. Epps told me that Grant asked him to recommend a reliable dealer. This letter shows that Troudeaux’s the dealer he selected. It might imply that, in fact, you’d lost the deal-or that you were about to.”

“In other words, you’re saying that, on paper at least, Alverez might think I had a motive for killing Mr. Grant.”

“Yeah, but actually, I think it may be even worse than that. Epps told me that the letter was just a matter of form, that he’d given Mr. Grant Troudeaux’s name on the phone when he first called and asked.”

“What?” I exclaimed, shocked.

“He said Mr. Grant was very appreciative for the referral.”

“When was this?”

“According to Epps, it was two weeks ago.”

I did a quick mental calculation. That was just about when Mr. Grant and I began to talk. I felt sick. I closed my eyes and leaned against the desk.

“I can’t believe it,” I murmured. “I just can’t believe it.”

“Why? Wouldn’t it be good business for Mr. Grant to have consulted more than one appraiser?”

“You’re right, of course,” I answered. “I just had no idea, and from the way he acted, it seems so unlikely.” I sat up and opened my eyes, startled by a thought. “Wait!” I said. “That means I’m not the only suspect.”

“Except that you were at Grant’s the morning he was killed. And Epps said that he was certain that Barney had pretty much locked in the deal.”

“How can he be so sure?” I asked, sounding calmer than I felt.

“Well,” Max said, and hesitated for a moment. “Troudeaux told Epps how excited he was about the Renoir, and said that Mr. Grant had agreed to sell it to him privately.”

“The Renoir?”

“I have the title here somewhere…” I heard the rustle of papers being shifted. “Here it is. It’s called Three Girls and a Cat. Epps explained that Troudeaux wanted to buy it for his wife for her birthday.”

The world seemed to reel, and I held on to the desk. Gretchen finished her call, and I heard her get up and open a file drawer. I forced myself to ignore her presence and focus instead on Max.

“Max,” I said.

“What?”

“Mr. Grant didn’t have a Renoir.”

After a long pause, Max said, “Maybe he’d already sold it to Troudeaux.”

“Or maybe Barney’s lying.”

“Maybe,” Max acknowledged.

“Oh, jeez,” I said, startled by a new thought. “I think I might have the answer.”

“What?”

“If there was a Renoir it had to have been hidden somewhere because I never saw it.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”

“So, what we need to do is find the hiding place.”

“Maybe he had a safe,” Max suggested.

“Not a conventional one. I would have spotted it.”

“We could explain our thinking to Alverez and ask him to search the house.”

“We don’t need to,” I said confidently. “I know how to find out.”

“How?”

“The video. Don’t you remember, Max? I videotaped every inch of that place!”