Jane Cleland - Consigned to Death

I sat forward. Bingo, I thought. What about an instant appraisal service? A homegrown version of the PBS television show?

Sasha and I could take turns staffing a booth at the tag sale for an hour each Saturday. We could hook up a computer so we could use our subscription services to easily find values for the better items. I stood up and walked to the window, excited at the thought. Barney couldn’t compete because he had no access to professional research. Martha’s work certainly didn’t count. I smiled devilishly.

Not only would I create a barrier to competition but I’d be able to make on-the-spot offers for items people might want to sell. We could call it Prescott’s Instant Appraisals. We’d highlight that it was free.

I began to pace, my mind racing, coming up with ideas, discarding some and keeping others. I thought of how the ad I’d use to announce the new service should read. I considered what the booth itself should look like, and I planned how to control a crowd if we were lucky enough to get one.

The phone rang.

“Barney Troudeaux’s on the phone,” Gretchen told me. “He wants to know if he can stop by and talk to you. He said it’s important.”

“Sure,” I said, my attention caught.

I couldn’t imagine what Barney wanted to say to me that would be in the category of important. I tapped the desk, anxiety replacing confidence and creativity. I glanced at the computer clock and realized that Mr. Grant’s funeral was over. Mr. Grant, a man I’d liked, yet apparently a thief and a liar. A man who’d been stabbed… murdered-why? To protect the paintings? Or to keep the secret that the paintings had been stolen? What did Barney know, and did his coming here have anything to do with the murder? Increasingly apprehensive, my heart begin to thud.

I paced. I stood in front of the window looking out. I sat down again.

Gretchen called up and told me Barney was there, and I asked her to send him up.

I walked to the spiral staircase and watched as he ascended.

“Hi, Barney,” I said, forcing a smile.

“Josie, great to see you! I love a spiral staircase! Clever use of space.”

“Thanks, Barney. That’s right, you haven’t been up to my office before, have you?”

“Never had the pleasure.”

“Well, come on in.”

I got him settled on the yellow love seat, offered him a beverage, which he declined, and holding my bottle of water in my lap the way a child holds a favorite blanket for security, I waited for him to speak.

“Josie,” he began, his beaming smile morphing into an oh-so-sincere, I-hate-to-be-here-but-duty-calls look, “I’m here to offer help.”

“Really,” I said, unsure of my ground.

“This situation with the Grant estate… it’s truly awful.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

“Yes,” I said, wary. Whatever was going on, the longer it took him to get to the point, the worse I figured the news would be.

“I understand you’re helping Mrs. Cabot.”

I thought about avoiding the question, but saw no point. It wasn’t confidential. In fact, knowing Wes, it would be in tomorrow’s paper. “Yes, she’s hired us to do an appraisal.”

He nodded. “That’s a big job.”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“Her daughter, Miranda, she’s concerned about her mother. She’s elderly, as you know.”

Dressing up her name from Andi to Miranda didn’t make the bald-faced lie true. Andi had no thoughts for or about her mother. All she cared about was money. Money for Andi.

“Not so old,” I said.

“You can’t always tell by looking,” he said, as if he were the bearer of bad news.

“Do you have a point, Barney?”

“Miranda feels obliged to challenge her mother’s decisions about the Grant estate, I’m afraid.”

Well, well, well. Chief Alverez told her to sue. And I would have bet money she wasn’t listening.

“I suppose she has the legal right to do so, but it’s hard to believe that anyone would think Mrs. Cabot isn’t competent to handle her own affairs.”

“Well, luckily, that’s nothing you or I will have to sort out.”

“True,” I agreed.

“Here’s the thing. Miranda has hired me to help her sort through the complicated issues related to Mr. Grant’s estate.”

I felt like cursing him, but gripped the side of the chair instead. No emotiozzal display, my father told me, and I took a long moment remembering his admonition. Breathing slowly, I was able to smile and stay silent, conveying, I hoped, disinterest and mild curiosity.

“I thought, and tell me if I’m out of line here, that maybe, just maybe, if you and I work together, we can help this mother and daughter find it in their hearts to settle their differences without resorting to the court system.”

The son of a bitch, I thought, half admiring his sterling ability to make his outrageous encroachment seem like a sacrifice he was willing to make for the greater good of others. I wished Alverez was here, confident that he’d share my appreciation of Barney’s ridiculous and transparent offer, except it was probably a good thing that he wasn’t in the room. If he were, I’d look up to share the joke, and once our eyes met, I doubted that I’d be able to keep a straight face. As it was, I was having a hard time maintaining professional decorum.

“Andi’s going to do what she needs to do, including, I guess, hire you. Thanks for the offer, Barney, but we don’t need any help.”

He stayed another twenty minutes, trying to find a wedge into my defenses. Finally he gave up. “Josie, you’re a stubborn young bird.”

“Hell, Barney, I’m not stubborn. I’m steadfast.”

He laughed, patted my shoulder, and left. But as he turned away, I noted that his eyes stayed hard. He was not amused at my refusal. Too bad, Barney , I said to myself as I escorted him out to his truck. Too bad for you, you devious son of a bitch, but you don’t get a piece of this one.

Don, the recruiter, called with questions about the skill level required, and I explained that in addition to a solid foundation of knowledge, we were looking for half diligence and half common sense. He chuckled and told me he had someone in mind and would call back, he hoped, within the hour.

I realized that whoever Don found as our temporary researcher, he or she, as a newcomer, would need the appraisal protocol explained in more detail than Sasha had required. I sighed, resigned to doing what felt like busywork. It was too complex to delegate, but it had to be done.

“Gretchen,” I said, calling her, “I need a binder. Would you bring one up?”

“Sure. Want some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. “Good idea.”

I heard the clickity-clack of her heels on the steps, swung around in my chair, and saw her enter with a big smile, then accepted the steaming mug of coffee she proffered. She placed the burgundy binder, preprinted with our logo and name on the cover, on my desk.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“No, thanks. It’s a research thing.”

“Well, let me know if I can do anything.” With a cheery wave, she was gone.

I thought for a moment about what to include in the binder. I started with a description of the grandfather clock and added the protocol itself along with the explanation of how I calculated the value. Since the researcher would be new to the region, I added a paragraph explaining my distrust of Troudeaux’s research. Deciding that more information was better than less, I photocopied the title pages of the two catalogues I consulted, Shaw’s and Troudeaux’s, along with the pages containing the specific entries about the clock. I retraced my steps on the Web sites, found the information I’d discovered previously, and printed out the relevant pages.