Deadly Appraisal (26 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

H

ank didn’t do it,” I announced.

Rowcliff and Max stared at me.

“He couldn’t have,” I declared.

“Why do you say that?” Rowcliff pressed.

“I told you, remember? Maisy and I drank wine
after
she left her table—Hank was already at the back with his quartet, getting ready to play the fanfare. I kept going back over it again and again, thinking that maybe I was confusing one glass of wine with another. But I wasn’t.”

Max rubbed his nose, thinking.

Rowcliff said, “That’s what you came up with?” He snorted. “Alibis are rarely conclusive. Until I see a minute-by-minute schedule definitively excluding Hank—well, even then, I want it notarized before I dismiss him as a suspect.”

“There’s more. Do you have those photos?” I asked. “The ones you showed me before? I think I know what happened, but I can show you quicker than I can tell you.”

Rowcliff picked up the telephone to make the request. In less than a minute, a uniformed police officer knocked once, then stepped into the room to hand Detective Rowcliff the plastic bag containing the photos. Opening it, Rowcliff shook the photos loose and spread them across the table. “Be my guest,” he said.

Sorting through them, I quickly found the photo I sought—the one where Dora stood with her head tilted to the left, looking at the bid sheets.

“This is it,” I said, and laid it on the table so they could see it. They both leaned forward to gain a better view. “Do you remember how I told you what happened? It was during one of our first interviews. . . . I told you how I was admiring Dora while Britt reached across the wineglasses. Well, this shows what I was looking at—Dora. Except she wasn’t focused on the bid sheets. Look.” I waited for them to follow my finger as I indicated what I was referring to. “I can barely fathom it—and I can’t believe I’m saying it aloud—but the truth is that if you look at this picture, I think you’re seeing Dora in the act of adding poison to the wine—right here.” I touched the spot, then looked up at the detective. “The last time I’d looked at this photo, all I noticed was Dora’s dress—just as I did at the Gala.”

“And now?” Rowcliff asked.

“Do you remember how I said that I thought Dora’s shawl was too close to the wine? So I moved it aside?”

“Right,” Max concurred. “I remember that.”

“Except that if you look at this picture, Dora’s shawl
wasn’t
too close to the wine—the angle is wrong. That’s what I
perceived,
but this photo shows it isn’t true.” I pointed to Dora’s arm, indicating where the shawl was draped
over
the wine. “Do you see?” I asked. “There’s a tiny bulge here—near her wrist. At first, when I looked at the photo, I thought it was her purse. But if you look here—wedged under her left elbow—
that’s
the purse.
So what’s the bulge?”
I raised my eyes to Rowcliff’s. “Dora had the poison in her fist at that moment. Right there.”

“Maybe,” Rowcliff acknowledged.

“And,” I said, reaching for another photo, one that showed her black envelope-shaped clutch purse, “I bet she kept the poison here until she was ready to use it.”

“Why?” Rowcliff asked.

“Where else could it be? Look at her dress and shawl. There’re no pockets, no hidden flaps or anything. It would be too risky to tuck it down the front of her dress and have to pull it out in front of everyone, but no one thinks anything about it when a woman opens her purse and pulls out a tissue or a hankie.”

He picked up the two photos and stared at them one after another, tapping them against the wooden table.

“She’s here, right?” I asked as he considered what I’d said.

“Dora? Here?” Rowcliff asked. “Why would you think she’s here?”

“I spoke to her and she told me she was going to come here and wait until you let her see Hank.”

After a short pause, and without a word, Rowcliff slipped the photographs into his shirt pocket and left the room. Max and I exchanged glances but didn’t speak. I felt uncomfortably aware of Officer Johnston’s observant presence.

When he returned, Rowcliff seemed more confident and less adversarial than before. “I’ll have information about Dora soon,” he said.

Maybe,
I thought,
he uses antagonism as an investigative tool, and now that things are coming together for him, he doesn’t need to act mean.
I was white-hot curious about what he’d done when he left the room, but instead of asking questions that I knew he wouldn’t answer, I focused on his words.

“In the meantime,” he said, “let’s continue.” He shifted position and tapped a short sequence with his pencil. “Let’s start at the beginning. There are three issues—the murder of Maisy, the attempt to kill Josie, and the theft of the Chinese pot.”

“Tureen,” I said.

“Right. Tureen. From what you’ve said, it seems that Dora Reynolds
could
have poisoned the wine. She was there, and the photograph could be interpreted as you suggest. She was in and out of Hank’s house all the time, so she had access to the cyanide. We’re back to motive. Do you have any idea why she would want to kill Maisy?”

“No.” I felt suddenly sad and lonely. I
liked
Dora. Was it possible that she was a murderer? Was it possible she was a thief? Had she tried to kill me, too? I took a deep breath, trying to shake off my gloom.

“What will you do now?” Max asked.

Rowcliff shrugged and tapped his pencil. “Talk to her.”

I crossed my arms protectively at his words. I didn’t envy Dora that conversation. “There’s still the question of how she could be certain Maisy would get the poison. And not me,” I said.

“You moved the glasses aside, right?” Rowcliff asked.

I nodded, remembering.

He shrugged again. “Dora kept her eye on them and made sure Maisy got the one she wanted her to get.”

“Maybe she was trying to kill Josie all along and it’s
Maisy
who died by accident,” Max observed.

“Josie?” Rowcliff asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Dora targeted Maisy because Maisy was blackmailing her, not Hank.”

Rowcliff’s open manner slammed shut. “What do you know about blackmail?”

I froze.
What am I supposed to know? Keep it vague,
I warned myself. “Nothing. I don’t know where I heard that Maisy was blackmailing someone. Maybe I read about it in the paper.”

Rowcliff stared, trying to wither me. I stared back, trying not to show how intimidating I found him.

“Okay, then,” Rowcliff said. “
If
Maisy was blackmailing someone, what do you think she might have been blackmailing Dora about?” he asked me.

“I can’t imagine,” I said.
But I bet Wes could figure it out,
I thought. “Did the money come from Hank’s accounts?”

“From their joint account.”

Dora had a ready-to-go defense—blaming Hank.
I wondered how Hank would handle her betrayal. Neither Max nor I spoke.

Rowcliff tapped a steady beat for a long minute. “Let’s talk about the second issue—the attempt on Josie’s life. Have either of you had any additional thoughts?”

“It doesn’t make sense, does it? If Dora was targeting Maisy, why did she try and run
Josie
down?
If
it was Dora behind the wheel. Was it? Do you know?” Max asked.

“We think it was Hank’s car,” Rowcliff hedged.

“Assuming it was Dora who drove the car, there’s a chance that she didn’t know that I
hadn’t
seen something,” I volunteered. “Maybe she was convinced that I was a threat—that I would reveal something she thought I
might
have seen at the Gala, or maybe she was worried that I would blackmail her myself.”

“All possible,” Rowcliff acknowledged. “Here’s another possibility. Maybe she
wanted
us to think it was Josie who was targeted.”

“Interesting,” Max responded, thinking aloud. “You’re saying she tried to kill Josie because she wanted us confused.”

“I’m saying it’s possible. Maybe Dora was afraid that if we looked hard enough at people’s motives for killing Maisy, we’d find hers. She wanted us to think that Josie was the intended victim to turn the light off of Maisy.”

And if it would have worked,
I speculated,
if she would have killed me, you might have stopping trying to trace the money.
The implications began to dawn on me. “Wait! You’re saying that
I
was a
decoy
?” I asked, appalled.

“Yeah,” Rowcliff agreed, “maybe.”

“Could she have just taken Hank’s car? Wouldn’t that have made him suspicious once he heard what happened?”

“Hank’s not talking much, but he did say that Dora took his car Monday evening, telling him that hers was in the shop. No big deal. They borrowed each other’s cars all the time. Later that night, she said she’d hit a deer, that she was okay but the car needed work and that she was having the repairs done. She came home in a rental.”

“Are you suggesting that after all that, Dora switched plans and decided to try to make you think I was the murderer?”

“No way to know until we talk to her,” Rowcliff said, shrugging. He gave a little tap-tap with his pencil and seemed about to continue speaking, when there was a discreet knock on the door.

The same uniformed police officer who had brought the photographs stepped into the room and handed Detective Rowcliff a single sheet of paper. Max and I watched as he scanned it. A cynical smile appeared on his face and he nodded slowly. “Well, well. It seems that Dora Reynolds has been picked up just over the Massachusetts border. She was on her way to Logan,” he said, naming the Boston airport.

“She was fleeing?” I asked, this new shock rocking my brain.

“With a ticket to Houston in her purse. A
one-way
ticket,” Rowcliff said, highlighting the phrase.

I realized that Dora must have hung up the phone after talking to me and immediately headed south.

“So, is Dora en route back?” Max asked.

“It’ll take a while to get through the legalities. But,” he said, glancing at the sheet of paper that had just been delivered, “we should have her prints within the hour.” He turned to me and added, “Then we’ll know more about her—and, maybe,
you.
”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I

sat in near-frozen silence, terror at Rowcliff’s insinuation settling over me like a shroud.

“Why do you say that?” Max asked.

Detective Rowcliff tapped his pencil. “We can speculate all we want, but until we know
if
Dora is the killer, we can’t know how Josie fits in. There are too many question marks.”

Max nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Let’s talk about the soup bowl,” Rowcliff said, changing the subject.

“The soup tureen,” I corrected.

“Right. The tureen.” Rowcliff tap-tapped. “We’ve confirmed that Hank bought the fake one. What I want to know is how it got into your auction room. Could Dora have made the switch?” he asked.

I thought about that day with Britt and Dora. We placed the little Post-its on the display cases.
Of course,
I thought. “You know how I said Britt Epps could have replaced the tureen when he went to the rest room with his oversized pilot’s case in hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Dora was on her own in the auction venue—with a huge tote bag.” I shook my head. “And I didn’t think anything of it. She would have had plenty of time to make the switch.”

“Okay, then.” Rowcliff almost smiled.

“Why would Hank have bought it?” I asked.

Rowcliff shrugged. “He said she’d asked for it for her birthday.”

“But why?” I asked. “
Why
would she have stolen it?”

Rowcliff shrugged. “Maybe to get herself a chunk of cash to start a new life in Houston.”

Dora?
I still couldn’t believe it. I didn’t
want
to believe it. My perception of Dora told me that it
couldn’t
be true—
and if you can’t trust your perceptions, what’s left to trust?

The legalities must not have taken as long as Rowcliff expected, since Dora was being led in as Max and I were heading out. Max had promised to produce me for another round of questioning if and when Detective Rowcliff requested it.

“Dora,” I called without thinking.

She turned to me. “Josie,” she said. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not,” I responded.

She smiled angelically but didn’t answer.

I called Wes on my way home.

“I can’t tell you anything,” I told him.

“Then why are you calling?” he asked, sounding hurt.

“If you wanted to check out someone else—well, I can’t tell you the name.”

Wes paused, processing my comment. “I already looked at Hank and Britt.”

“I know.”

“And Maisy.”

I stayed silent.

“Dora,” he said.

“Good night, Wes.”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” he said, barely able to contain his excitement.

Ty called and left a message saying that Aunt Trina was continuing to weaken. His voice delivered the sad news in measured and quiet tones. Poor Ty. Poor Aunt Trina. I wished she would recover quickly so Ty could come home. It would be a relief to have his strength nearby to supplement my own. I dialed his cell phone. It went to voice mail.

“I’m so sorry that Aunt Trina’s worse. It must be so hard for you to see her decline. Ty, I’m here and going to bed soon, but if you want to talk, call. Otherwise, we’ll speak tomorrow, okay?”

Too tired and too confused to eat, I skipped food. Instead, I took a hot shower, crawled into bed, and within seconds was asleep.

At seven o’clock on Saturday morning, Wes called.

“I know it’s early,” he said, anticipating my complaint.

“Not on a Saturday,” I told him. “Saturdays are tag-sale days. They always start early.”

“I got some information. We gotta meet.”

We settled on connecting at the tag-sale entrance in an hour. With Chi following in the distance, I grabbed a cup of coffee and a bagel from a deli en route. When I arrived, I found Wes waiting by the door.

“I only have a sec,” I told him. “What’s going on?”

“I found out about Dora.”

“And?”

“It’s kind of funky.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, hating his habit of building suspense.

“Dora Reynolds’s records only go back a few years.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, perplexed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It looks like she got a new identity three years ago.”

“Do you figure she was getting a fresh start?” I asked, thinking of Gretchen, secretive about her past since the day I met her.

“Maybe,” he ventured, eager for drama, “she’s on the run.”

I looked away, staring deep into the forest, seeing nothing. Maybe that one fact—that Dora had assumed a new identity—would lead to an understanding of her motive. People with innocent reasons for changing their identities don’t kill—unless they’re threatened by the very thing that made them start over in the first place.
What would Dora’s past reveal?

“I guess it’s possible,” I acknowledged without conviction. “But her reasons could be completely innocent. Sometimes people start over to escape an abusive husband, for example, or maybe she’s in the Witness Protection Program.”

“Makes sense,” Wes replied as I thought again of Gretchen.

Is that why Gretchen ran—to escape violence?
I wondered.
If so, I hope she’s safe—and I hope she knows she can tell me if she’s not, and that I’ll help her in any way I can.

“We need to know more. Were you able to find out anything about her previous identity?” I asked.

“No,” Wes said, frustrated. “I’m still digging.” Putting his notebook away, he added, “I have a separate question for you.”

“Okay,” I said, and waited.

He seemed unsure how to begin, or how to ask what he wanted to know.

“What’s up, Wes?” I asked after a long pause.

“Well, there’s this girl. She was really helpful, you know, in getting me some information. So, like, I want to take her to dinner.”

“That’s a good idea,” I told him.

“Where?”

“Where what?” I asked, confused.

“Where should I take her? Someplace nice, you know?”

He kept his eyes down and I realized he was embarrassed to consult me.
Wow,
I thought.
Wes has a date. Imagine that!

“What kind of girl is she?” I asked. “You know, kind of wild and crazy or more sedate? Formal? Informal?”

He looked at me helplessly. I could have been speaking Swahili.

“She’s nice,” he said.

I nodded. “Take her to Connolly’s Pub. Do you know it—on Route One? It has a good menu, decent prices, and the atmosphere is okay—you know what I mean? It’s not too rowdy or loud, so you can actually have a conversation. But it’s still pretty informal.”

“Thanks,” Wes said. “That sounds exactly right.”

At eleven o’clock, I was in the Prescott’s Instant Appraisal booth, tactfully explaining to a disbelieving man that his nineteenth-century decoy was, in fact, worth very little—maybe twenty-five dollars.

“I heard some decoys sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he argued.

“That’s true,” I acknowledged, “but this isn’t one of those, I’m afraid. It wasn’t carved by a famous maker and it’s in pretty rough shape.”

“Well, if it isn’t worth anything, it isn’t,” he said, quickly resigning himself to disappointment. “What can you tell me about it?”

“It’s a blue-winged teal drake decoy, dating from the late nineteenth century. I would classify it as folk art.”

“Twenty-five bucks?” he asked.

“At the most, I’m afraid,” I said ruefully.

He thanked me and got up to leave.

A woman clutching an old pine turned bowl entered on his heels and I invited her to have a seat.

The wood had no chips or cracks and I was able to tell her that probably it would retail for over two thousand dollars. She was thrilled and left chattering to her husband, holding the bowl as if it were made of gold.

When Fred arrived to take his turn in the booth, I decided to take the plunge and ask Eric about the call from Gretchen and renovating his house. Not knowing was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. He was at the cash register, so I waited for him to finish ringing up a sale.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, smiling to diffuse any potential anxiety.

“Sure. What?”

“The other day, Gretchen called in to talk to you on her day off. What did she want?”

He looked embarrassed. “It’s nothing—just a work thing.”

“What?” I asked, still smiling. It was unusual for me to demand to know about a phone call, but not extraordinary—after all, I owned the place. I became increasingly anxious as I waited for his response.

He took a deep breath. “It was about that job description. She’s like a maniac about it, you know, listing every little thing I do. She thought of something and wanted to tell me right away.”

“That’s great!” I said, relieved that the subject of the call was innocuous and delighted at hearing an example of Gretchen’s loyalty to the company. “Gretchen is doing the right thing, Eric. It might be hard for you to understand, but Prescott’s growth is tied to your producing a detailed and accurate job description.”

“I guess.”

I tapped his shoulder affectionately. “Consider it to be a necessary evil, okay? Listen, I drove by your house the other day,” I said, changing the subject and keeping my tone light and airy. “I saw the contractor’s sign. Congratulations on doing some work on the place.”

He frowned a little. “We had no choice, really. The roof was leaking, and, well, we had to. Did you get a call from the bank?”

“What do you mean?”

“We got a home-equity line of credit to pay for the repairs,” Eric explained, “and I was thinking that they might call to verify my job, you know?”

“Oh, I see. Guess they didn’t need to. Anyway, congratulations to you and your mom.”

I nodded politely at another customer, who was ready to pay for her glass animals, and left Eric to his task. Glancing around as I walked, I saw that the tag sale was busy, and I smiled.
Excellent!
I said to myself.
Buy, buy, buy!

Stepping into the main office, I saw that Sasha’s eyes shone with excitement.

“I have good news about the epergne,” she said.

“Tell me!”

“It was commissioned by the East India Company and presented to the fifth earl of St. Erth in 1794.”

“That’s terrific. So it’s as important a piece as we thought it was.”

“Absolutely. I think it’s going to be of interest to museums. It’s unique.”

“What figure did you put on it?” I asked, crossing my fingers for luck.

She smiled. “A hundred and twelve thousand dollars.”

Yowzi!
I thought. “And the provenance?” I asked, keeping my cool.

“Easy as pie,” Sasha said. “It was in the family until 1957, when it was sold to an antique store in Harrogate and subsequently bought by Mrs. McCarthy’s aunt Augusta. Mrs. McCarthy kept all of her aunt’s receipts.”

I gave her a thumbs-up.

Between the rare epergne and Mrs. McCarthy’s other pieces, we had a solid foundation for an important auction, one that would be a milestone in Prescott’s history. In addition, we were currently building collections of rare books, Victorian tear catchers, grape scissors, and Regency snuffboxes. I controlled myself, but what I really wanted to do was shout “Whoopee!” and click my heels in the air.

Ty called midafternoon to tell me that Aunt Trina had died. He sounded completely worn down.

“Oh Ty!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you do now?”

“Clean out her place. Plan her funeral.”

“I can fly out there and help.”

“Thanks. But I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? I’d be glad to.”

“Thanks, Josie. If I needed you, I’d ask. The truth is that Aunt Trina sold off most of her things before she moved into the assisted-living place, so it’s going to be pretty easy to clean out her things. The funeral . . . well, she wanted to be cremated. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I thought maybe when I got home, I’d contact the VA and organize a memorial, an interment, you know? I mean, Aunt Trina was a veteran. She was a nurse in World War Two, so I figured I’d have ‘Taps’ played and the flag thing done and all. And that way, she’d be near me, so I could go visit.”

Tears welled up and I swallowed twice. “That sounds wonderful, Ty. It would be an honor to attend with you.”

“Thanks, Josie.”

He said he’d schedule his flight home for later in the week. After we hung up, I sat for a while, feeling dejected, then sighed and reached for the phone to call Zoe and confirm dinner.

“Great! Listen, would you please tell Jake that you’re not going to wear jammies to dinner.”

I laughed and said, “Sure.”

“You need to wear your jammies,” Jake announced imperiously.

“I’m going to wear jeans,” I told him, “not jammies.”

“No. You need to wear jammies!” he insisted.

“I’m sorry, Jake. But I’m not going to.”

He dropped the phone and it made a hollow clattering sound that hurt my ear.

“Sorry about the dropped phone, but thanks for standing your ground,” Zoe said.

“No problem,” I replied, giggling.