The Big Steal (20 page)

“Lokesvara. It's a figure with multiple arms—four, I think it is.” I smiled when I realized I was waving my arms around, palms outward, in imitation of the figure's usual pose. “A Buddha god. You've seen all sorts of representations of him. Anybody who ever visited a Buddhist country has probably brought one home, like santos from Catholic countries. They're sold in every bazaar and souvenir shop in Tibet and Nepal, Japan—everywhere. You can even get them on Fifth Avenue in those shops that have been going out of business ever since they opened.”

“Oh, I know the statue you mean. About this tall?” She held one hand above the other. “You're right. One of the figures was stolen. There were two of them, you see. I thought maybe they were a pair, but they were kept in different places. Guess that's why they didn't take both of them. I'll go get the one they didn't take.”

I kept turning the pages. I was sinking deeper and deeper into the murky hole Eugene Kirklander's appraisal and Hoyt Wyndfield's notations had opened up. Items sold. Copies made. And always the money. Not that there's anything wrong with making a profit. What was getting to me were the questions those receipts and correspondences were raising. It was starting to look like a fair number of Wynderly's pieces that could be copied or faked had been sold and replaced with—yes, a fake.

But why would Hoyt have put the evidence of what he was doing in with the appraisal? One would have thought that he would have destroyed, or at least hidden away, the damning information. Compiling it and putting it with the appraisal
made no sense. I was totally befuddled until I remembered a passage in Mazie's diary.

It was just before she began listing plantings and details about the gardens. She had complained, though gently, that Hoyt was a meticulous record-keeper. Apparently, so obsessive was he that he wanted all the records kept together to keep track of exactly how much money he was spending and making. I remembered how Thomas Jefferson had kept detailed records of every debt he incurred as he spent himself into bankruptcy.

But why the wheeling and dealing at all? What dishonest streak was running through Hoyt's psyche? Yes, I had a lot of thinking to do.

I turned to the list of stolen and damaged items Matt had provided and began searching through it. I found what I was looking for, “Ancient bronze figure of Lokesvara. 6-1/2 inches high. Circa AD 900. Extraordinarily rare. $8,000,” just as Michelle returned.

She held the Lokesvara figure out to me.

“In a moment,” I said. “Right now, I'm trying to sort out facts and dates. You can be a big help, if you would, please. To start with, where did the values Wynderly turned in to Babson and Michael come from?” I counted with my fingers. “We're now dealing with what … three different appraisals? This one by Kirklander, which no one knows about. The one from after Hoyt died in the late sixties. And then, the one after Mazie died two decades later in the mid-1980s. That's the one that the bank had made … the one you gave me. Which is why I'm here … because it's so outdated.”

Michelle nodded.

I did the hypothetical math. While I talked, Michelle jotted down the figures.

“The real Lokesvara that Hoyt purchased in the 1920s on their trip to Koyoto was appraised at an accurate three thousand dollars in 1955. In 1928 Hoyt had paid a few yen to get a group of fake figures made. He later sold them, one by one, all but one of the five fakes, passed off for the real thing, for a couple of thousand each—enough below the appraisal value of the real one to make the sale look really sweet. He made quite a profit from his investment of a few yen, around ten thousand dollars. A nice sum for the 1950s.”

“What about the appraisal from the sixties, after Hoyt's death?”

“In this instance, we don't really need that one,” I explained. “By the 1980s, when the bank had their appraisal made, the value of the real figure had increased to eight thousand dollars. Now that would be OK …
if
it
was
the real figure.”

“And the value of the fakes?”

“In the eighties? Twenty-five, fifty dollars perhaps.”

This wasn't the first time I'd seen an antiques flimflam job. And from the get-go I'd had my suspicions when I saw those Tang horses. Other pieces had added to my skepticism. But this scam was bigger than I ever would have imagined. No longer did it appear that a couple of antiquing amateurs had been taken by some shrewd or shifty dealers out to make a quick buck. Hoyt obviously knew what he was doing. Did Mazie know? And the secret rooms …

Michelle picked up the Lokesvara she had placed on the table and looked at it. Her face said it all.

I laughed. “I'm wondering the same thing you are,” I said. “I don't know either. It'll take an Oriental antiquities specialist to determine if this one's real or not, someone much more knowledgeable in that field than I am.”

Dear Antiques Expert: Hester Bateman is frequently mentioned in articles about 18th-century English silversmiths. What made her work so outstanding
?

Hester Bateman was probably a more innovative business-woman than she was a great silversmith. In 1760, after her husband's death, she began using new technology that made silver items such as cream pitchers and spoons less expensive, thereby expanding the family's business. (Her sons and daughter-in-law worked with her.) Whether Hester actually made any silver is debated, though pieces bearing her mark do exist. These, however, don't compare in craftsmanship to pieces made by some of her contemporary silversmiths. Still, with so much written about her (she's been called the Queen of Silversmiths), silver marked Hester Bateman brings top prices.

I
WAS BEGINNING
to understand how the stories Babby had told Michelle about Mazie, and Michelle's own experiences with Mazie could blur. I, too, was having difficulty distinguishing events that had actually transpired over the last couple of days from the impressions I had formed based on what I
had read, been told, or surmised. “Life is not what one lived,” Gabriel García Márquez wrote, “but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”

Concentrating on the work at hand was next to impossible. My mind kept circling back to Mazie and Hoyt and the horde of secrets their lives must have held. I was tempted to ask Michelle if she knew about the rooms I had discovered in the attic.

I had begun to adjust my perception of Michelle. She had seemed so genuinely touched that Mazie had wanted her to have her china dog collection. And in retrospect, Michelle's love for Wynderly seemed sincere, if sometimes displayed dramatically. Then there was the fact that she had shown me Mazie's secret room and Kirklander's book. Those actions spoke volumes in her favor. Yes, I was beginning to warm up to Michelle Hendrix the same way I had unexpectedly found myself warming up to Wynderly. Still I couldn't bring myself to take her into my total confidence.

For one thing, she didn't know antiques well enough to be of much help. I was in dire need of someone disinterested, but trusty, who could help me winnow through Wynderly's tangled web of stories and the endless accumulation of stuff. I kept thinking of Peter. Together, we could surely get to the root of it all.

But boy oh boy, was the foundation's board going to go through the roof when they learned that several of the big dollar items weren't what they were cracked up to be. I moaned to myself. One thing was for sure. Hoyt's records, though helpful evidence, were going to greatly upset those who revered the Wyndfield name. What Hoyt had needed was a Rose Mary
Woods. If she'd erase Nixon's tapes, surely she would have burned Hoyt's receipts. Wonder why
Mazie
hadn't destroyed them?

“Michelle. Let's you and me take a step or two backwards,” I said. “This book … this appraisal made by Kirklander. You say you found it, then hid it away again. How long have you known about it? And you're sure, really positive, no one else knows about all this?”

“It happened by accident. Right after I took the job. You think the office is a mess now? You should have seen it then. Anyway, the house was still open for some tours that had been booked before Wynderly was officially closed. I knew the closing was inevitable, but the board hadn't announced it publicly yet. One day I got this call from Frederick Graham. He said he needed a copy of the agreement that the board had signed with the bank. I turned the place upside down looking for it. And I did find it, but I also found lots of other stuff, including Kirklander's book in the bottom of one of the drawers. Well actually, it was in a
box
in the bottom of one of the drawers. Like I told you, it was underneath old papers and clippings—articles about parties and, well, nothing that seemed to have any relevance or importance.”

“So, why did you pay any attention to it?”

“I was being diligent. I came across lots of things that I might have overlooked if Graham hadn't been so insistent that I find that specific paper. I wasn't about to have him come search the place and find I'd overlooked it. That's partly why the office is the wreck it is now. I started to organize at least some of the important things.” She laughed. “Then, after it was announced in the newspaper that the house was going to
be shut down, well, I figured, why bother? What difference did it make if the place was going to go to rack and ruin anyway. But that book—“Michelle covered her mouth and chin with her hand in an attempt to hide her emotions, but tears had already begun to well up in her eyes. “I just couldn't let it be found. I hid it.”

“But why, Michelle? Why didn't you tell someone?”

“I don't know how to explain it.” She crossed the room and sank into one of the straight-backed chairs lined up against the wall. She sat and said nothing for a while.

“Look, I love this place,” she finally said. “There's no other way to put it. When I was a little girl, I practically had free rein of Wynderly. To me it was like a dream out of a fairy tale. I'd come with Babby, then when I'd go home, I'd lie in my bed and remember all the things I'd seen. All night long I'd dream I lived here, especially if Babby had sung her special song to me.”

Michelle began to hum, then sing. “I dreamt that I dwel-t in mar-ble halls, with vassals and serfs at my side, And of all who assem-bled with-in those walls, That I was the hope and the pride.”

I hadn't thought of that song in a hundred years, and probably never would have thought of it again without Michelle's prodding. “I know that song,” I said. “It's the, the …”

“The Gypsy Girl's Song.”

“Yes, yes. My mother used to sing it, too. Her father had sung it to her.”

“For me, that's what Wynderly was,” she said. “Marble halls. Long, beautiful marble halls. I dreamed I could live here. That Wynderly could be mine, or even if I couldn't live
in Wynderly, that at least I, too, could live in a grand house filled with beautiful things.” She wiped the corners of her eyes and laughed. “I didn't have a clue what vassals and serfs were, but I knew I wanted them. So you have to understand, when I realized what Hoyt was doing, it was as if my dreams had been shattered,” she said. “I wasn't going to let him do that to others. If I could keep it all secret, then Wynderly would remain as it had been for me, as magical and wonderful as the pages of a big, beautiful pop-up book. I would leave the real world of my life. I was transported into a fairyland, but it was a
real
fairyland. Here
I
could be a princess like Mazie,” she said, her face glowing.

“Don't you see, if something happens to Wynderly, we'll all have lost something special, something none of the old plantations and horse farms around here can begin to provide. Everybody needs dreams.” Her smile had turned sad. “You know, when the house was still open, every time I would take a school group through the house I'd see some little girl just like me—stars in her eyes, seeing beautiful things she would never have seen if it hadn't been for Hoyt and Mazie. I'd watch her eyes grow larger and brighter, as if I was rubbing Aladdin's lamp when I'd tell her this was from Italy or that was from India. She could travel the world over right here in these marble halls, the same way I used to do.

“Then I found Kirklander's appraisal. At first it didn't make sense to me. You know I don't know much about antiques—not like you do. But you don't have to know squat about antiques to figure out when a scam's going on.”

Her eyes searched mine as if hoping to find some understanding. “I'd never been so disappointed. That's why I hid
the book,” she said. “But what I don't understand is
why
Hoyt would have done it? All that cheating and stealing was bad enough, but what he did … Why, he
lied
to us. He made us believe these things were real. You don't build people's dreams and hopes and then destroy them.”

I was at a loss for words—an unusual situation for me. When I remained silent she continued.

“And Mazie. Poor, poor Mazie. How could he have betrayed her so? She loved Hoyt. Tell me, what's going to happen to Wynderly
now
?”

“If only I knew,” was the best I could come up with.

Michelle took a deep, unhappy breath. “Oh well, I guess what's done is done. What Hoyt didn't destroy, looks like the bank will,” she said walking back to the table where we had spread out the papers alongside the bits of broken china left behind after the theft. She picked up one of the pieces that had once been part of the Delft charger.

“Isn't it weird how you don't think of something for years and then, when the idea hits you, it's as if you had known it all along,” she said thoughtfully. “I just realized that Wynderly is probably one of the reasons why I married Haadhir.”

She ran her fingers along the jagged edge of the fragment. “No wonder I had wanderlust. For a little girl to be surrounded by the stories all these beautiful things held … It sounds silly now, but back then, thanks to Wynderly, I could dream of a better world.” Michelle cast her eyes downward. When she looked up, her eyes had a bittersweet look.