The Big Steal (26 page)

 

The question mark and last words were smeared, undoubtedly from Mazie's tears. It was easy to picture Mazie hidden away in the attic with no one to confide in. “I only wanted to surprise him,” she had written, repeating herself in her outpourings, the way we do when trying to explain or rationalize our actions.

 

Hoyt won't be back from Atlanta until the 20th. I had thought to myself how wonderful to have his packages waiting for him. And then … Oh why didn't the notice say that the packages were damaged? If I hadn't had to sign the insurance papers and verify the damage! To have to stand there to claim them when I realized what they were. I thought I was going to die. When I saw those Tang horses from Japan I felt sick. But it was the dogs. All those horrid Staffordshire dogs. It was when I saw their beady little black eyes staring at me that I knew something was wrong. Really wrong. Hoyt would never have bought dogs knowing how frightened I am of them. It was as if my heart stopped beating. And the men were so nice. They didn't know. Now what am I to do?

I am worn out from thinking and worrying. I can do only one thing. Ask for guidance. I will do what I have done so
many times. I will pray to the Blessed Mother. Forgive us all that is past
.

 

There her entry stopped. I could envision Mazie going into the priest hole to pray. My own hand was trembling as I replaced the postcard and put the book down.

Hoyt had long ago learned about importing goods from his ventures in the tobacco market with his cousin. As rich Americans, they had had access to every aspect of foreign trade. Between Hoyt's love for things and contacts in places like Kyoto, having little objects like the bronze figures and pottery horses made and shipped to him was simple. With Hoyt's aristocratic background and gentlemanly ways, selling them as precious antiquities was equally simple. Some antiques dealers have long been notorious for selling fake wares to overly eager, unknowing clients. Undoubtedly Hoyt dealt with dealers, individuals, anyone whose money was real, and whose knowledge was slim.

As for the furniture he was having copied, European things were extremely fashionable between the wars. Newly rich Americans had traveled abroad and wanted the pieces they had seen in stately homes and palaces for themselves. As early as 1931, Herbert Cescinsky had warned his readers that more “antique” furniture existed than could ever have been made. In
The Gentle Art of Faking Furniture
he had written that eighteenth-century English furniture alone “has equipped most of the millionaires' houses and apartments from New York to the Pacific Coast, to say nothing of the huge stocks in the hands of American dealers and department stores ….
What has been left has to be divided into what remains
in situ
and the residue left to reinforce English dealers' stocks.”

With Hoyt's international connections he could buy well-crafted fakes and easily pass them off to the gullible public as genuine—making a pretty penny along the way. Or, as in the instance of the giltwood table, have a masterful fake of the real thing made here, sell the valuable piece, pocket the money and pass the bogus one off at Wynderly as an original antique. It would have been his own private joke.

Mazie seemed so pliable, so willing to please her husband, Hoyt only had to say that he had found something he liked better and move an old piece out. Who knows, he might have said he was just changing things around, putting some piece up in the attic, or bringing one down. With so much stuff crammed up there …

But the Staffordshire dogs … and coming from Brazil? There I was stumped.

Lots of fakes and scammers have come out of South America, including Eduardo de Valfierno who had arranged back in 1911 for the
Mona Lisa
to be stolen so he could sell forgeries of da Vinci's masterpiece. Talk about a notorious scheme. But de Valfierno stood to make a fortune—several times over. Prissy little Staffordshire dogs? That was a different matter altogether.

There was no money to be made from selling Staffordshire dogs in the United States. You could buy them by the container load in England for only a few pounds each in the 1950s. What was I missing?

I went to the drawer and retrieved the dog I had taken from
the attic. I turned it over and over in my hands looking for something about it that would be wrong. It wasn't a fake, I was sure of that. It had all the earmarks of dating from around 1850 or 1860. The coloring was right: the hand-painted patches of the dog's coat were orangey red, not crimson like so many of the repros, and the gold was muted and only on the dog's chain and padlock. That passed muster. Shiny gold is a telltale sign of the fakes made in Czechoslovakia and Japan.

I placed the dog on the chest and stared at him. It made no sense. English Staffordshire pooches weren't even on the Brazilian radar screen, not in that land of bossa novas and sunkissed beaches. How had they gotten there in the first place?

I had read about how families who had fled Europe and England during the world wars and landed in Brazil and Argentina had taken with them only what they could.

How many times when making an appraisal had I been shown a fragile piece of porcelain, only to be told the same story by some dear old lady. The piece of Meissen or Wedg wood or other treasured china had traveled across the ocean with her grandparents or great-grandparents to their new country. And always the teapot or figurine, or whatever it was, held more than memories of the home and life left behind. It was a symbol of hope, the fulfillment of dreams. If something as fragile as the china could arrive safely, so could they.

I'd seen museum-quality pieces of majolica and Wedgwood and other European and British porcelains in the antiques shops in Rio. Where you find majolica and Wedgwood, you will find Staffordshire. That took care of how the Staffordshire dogs would have ended up in Brazil. But why ship a box of nineteenthcentury Staffordshire dogs from Brazil to America?

It wasn't as if every magazine was featuring Staffordshire figures as a must-have accessory. Then again, a pair of spaniels, or “flatbacks” as they were often called, since they sat flat against the chimney wall, would look nice on the mantel. They did have cute little faces and floppy ears and rounded fronts and—Rounded fronts. Ah …

The winter morning sun beginning to trickle in through the window was considerably brighter than that of the bedside lamp. I smiled. For the first day since my arrival, it promised to be a bright sunny day. I took that as a good omen.

“Come on, pooch,” I said and made a beeline over to the window where I could get a better look at him.

When my eyes couldn't detect anything wrong, I did what good appraisers learn to do early in their careers. I ran my fingertips over every inch of the dog, from his head to his toes to the tip of his tail wrapped around his hindquarters, feeling for any sort of irregularity—the slightest difference in hardness, a crack in the finish, a variation in how the surface felt—that would indicate some sort of repair. My fingers slid along until I came to the area where the spaniel was seated on the raised base. As my fingernail snagged on the tiniest indentation I paused. And then I felt a barely perceptible difference in texture.

I got out my magnifying glass. I could see the variation of the porcelain finish. No wonder I hadn't seen it: it was on the back of the figure and no larger than an inch square. But magnified, it was as clear as the day breaking outside. The porcelain surrounding that spot was a rich white, made even whiter with the sun shining on it. The small, repaired surface had an ivory tinge and a dull finish. The naked eye would
never have picked up the difference, especially if you weren't looking for it. But once detected, it couldn't be missed. Now I knew exactly what
else
to look for.

I held the dog in one hand. Did it feel a little heavy—or was that my imagination? I held it up to my ear and shook it. I couldn't hear or feel anything moving around inside. I turned the figure upside down. In the base was a tiny hole no larger than a ten-penny nail head, further evidence of the figure's mid-nineteenth-century age; without a small space for air and gas to escape during the firing process, the figure would have broken.

I laid the dog down on the bed while I searched for some small object to stick into the hole. A simple straight pin or needle, even a safety pin, would do, but it wasn't an item I usually kept with me. The bathroom. There, on the radiator cover, along with the tissues and toiletries was a mending kit.

Holding the spaniel in one hand, I inserted a needle into the hole. The tip went no deeper than half an inch before hitting something soft. I could feel it giving, but not much.

The dog wasn't mine. I had stolen it. Did anyone know the Staffordshire figures existed? Would anyone ever miss one—that is if the other Staffordshire dogs were ever discovered. Surely eventually they would be. In fact, I probably would end up telling someone about the whole room, but would anyone suspect that I'd taken one of the dogs?

I stared long and hard at the spaniel. Chances were it would never be missed. But if I found something hidden inside, and it held the key to this puzzle, then how would I explain that I knew about it?

The harder my mind worked, the more tangled my thoughts became. One thing I
was
sure of, though. I was in too deep to turn back.

I picked up the spaniel in one hand and one of my shoes in the other. I walked back into the bathroom, placed a towel in the sink, laid the figure on the towel, covered it with the washcloth, and in one swift blow with my shoe, broke the dog open.

When I lifted the washcloth, the towel was covered in red.

Dear Antiques Expert: I've found a platter I like, but it is marked “as is.” How do I decide if it is a good buy?

Begin by asking why you want the piece: for investment, to use, or to enjoy looking at. If for investment, remember, serious collectors seek items in perfect condition, though a truly rare piece may be bought if damaged or repaired. If you plan to use the platter, ask if its condition will affect its use. If for display, can the damage be hidden? I suggest you find out what pieces like, or similar to this one, are selling for in perfect condition. Knowing that, and how you will use it, you can then make a wise decision.

M
Y MARRIAGE TO
Hank Glass might have ended, but I owed him a lot. When we'd been in England some years back he had wanted to buy me a lovely ruby and diamond ring. I had liked a sapphire pin better. We had chatted on and on about them … which one I'd wear more, which one was the better buy, which one was prettier. Finally the saleswoman, whether being helpful or just trying to move on, pulled us aside. “About the ring,”
she had said in her British way. What came next was a lesson on rubies I'd never forgotten.

From inside the case she took out a whole tray of what I would have said were ruby and diamond rings. “Aren't they pretty? Stunning, actually. Sophisticated. Pure Art Deco. They loved rubies in the 1930s and ‘40s,” she said while removing one and putting it on her finger. “Everyone wanted them back then.” Moving her hand back and forth so the oval-cut center stone caught the light she said, “See the deep, almost fiery pigeon blood red color.”

She had our attention for sure. Then, watching us she said, “Rubellite. That's right. Rubellite. Pretty as a ruby. It would fool anyone except an expert. And the diamonds—”

Once again she turned her hand until the diamonds encircling the rubellite sparkled brightly. “Not only do the diamonds make it glisten all the more, they, well, let's say they give the”—she paused, no doubt to avoid calling it a ruby—“the center stone
credence
. With all those beautiful diamonds, the usual customer presumes it's a—“She ended her sentence with a smile.

“So, where do rubellites come from?” Hank asked.

“Brazil. A gemologist would explain that rubellites are really a variety of tourmaline. But few women care. It's the look, the romance. To be fair, most men don't bother to ask either.” She smiled at Hank. “
You
hadn't. If you had asked about the center stone, I could easily have told you it was a Brazilian ruby without blinking an eye.”

She glanced around to ensure our privacy. “That's what many people call them, even some salespeople.
Brazilian ruby
.
It's rather like an inside joke. There are very few rubies found in Brazil.” Then she said, “Yet, I've seen several ‘ruby' rings …”

She didn't have to say another thing. Hank bought the pin. Now I remembered that ring.

I put the remnants of the dog to one side and moved the stones on the towel around with my fingers. That many red stones that color and that large? And these were in only one dog. If all the dogs I'd left untouched on those shelves concealed rubies of this size and brilliance … No. That just wouldn't be possible. But
rubellites
, that was a different story.

Hoyt and his cousin's tobacco business had taken them to Brazil. Mazie had mentioned their trips there. From the notations in the appraisal book I had proof that Hoyt ordered counterfeit antiques and antiquities and sold them as the real things. So how did gem trafficking fit into the picture?

I stopped dead in my tracks. That reference in Mazie's diary to, oh, what was his name? The one who had found a gemstone mine. Felipe. How on earth had I remembered that, I wondered. I thought hard, trying to remember what she had written. From what I could recall, Hoyt had known him for a long time. It was totally possible that Hoyt had bought stones from him.

I put myself into Hoyt's mind, which I now knew was the mind of a gamesman and a crook—a gentleman rogue. What could be more of a challenge than to figure out how to smuggle large quantities of gemstones out of Brazil and into America? Add in the rush that comes with the risk …