Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

“Maybe Erin gave it to Leila.” He reached for his tea again.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. If her best friend gave that little carving to her she would have told Mac. It means something.”

“Do you have any idea what?”

I closed my eyes for a moment. When I looked at Mr. P. again there was no indication in his expression that he thought I was off on some wild-goose chase. “I don’t know,” I said. “It meant something to Leila and it meant something to Erin. Of all the things she could have asked Natalie for, aside from that photo, the only thing she wanted was a pillow and that little bird. And it was important enough that she brought it with her. Why? If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out everything else.”

Mr. P. nodded. “How can I help?”

I moved back over to his desk. “I thought if we could find out where it came from maybe we’d be able to find out when Leila bought it and then we could work backward and try to figure out what was happening in her life at the time.” I made a face. “That made a lot more sense in my head than it does when I say it out loud.”

He smiled. “It makes sense to me, my dear. Tell me everything you remember about that carving.”

I described the tiny bird as carefully as I could. Mr. P. set to work on his laptop and I went back up to my office. Less than half an hour later he knocked at my door. He was carrying his computer.

“You found something?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he said. He set the laptop on my desk, and I came around to look at the screen. “Is this the carving Erin Fellowes had with her?”

“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “Mr. P., you’re a genius.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Sarah. I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.” He glanced briefly at the screen again. “It occurred to me from your description that what we might be looking for was a netsuke.”

I frowned. “I’ve heard the word but I don’t exactly know what that is.”

Mr. P. took off his glasses, pulled a small cloth from the pocket of his gold shirt and began to clean them. “Netsuke originated in seventeenth-century Japan. Traditional kimono had no pockets, which meant men had to carry their belongings—tobacco, money—in containers, which were fastened to the sash of the kimono by a cord. The cord was held at the top of the sash by a netsuke, like a toggle.”

“That’s why the holes,” I said, remembering Erin turning the tiny carving over in her fingers.

“Exactly.” He touched the screen with a finger. “Your bird is actually a mandarin duck, oshidori . See the tiny carved feathers?”

The detail on the tiny creature was incredible. Both Mac and Stevie had said Leila had been interested in Asian art. It made sense that she’d had the oshidori.

“The mandarin is a symbol of fidelity,” Mr. P. continued. “Ironic because like most ducks they only mate for a season and then move on to a new pairing.” He gestured at the computer screen. “This one is part of a collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I think it’s possible that it and the netsuke we believe was Leila’s were originally part of the same set. It and of course Leila’s, if I’m correct about it, date from the late nineteenth century.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying it’s not a replica?”

“From what I can tell, no.”

“It’s valuable.”

He nodded. “There’s no question about that. You said Leila always kept it in her desk?”

“Yes. Both Natalie and Mac said she kept it in one of the drawers.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed. “It seems unlikely she didn’t know what she had. She studied art history at college for two years.”

“Which Erin would have also known.” I exhaled loudly in frustration. “This means something. It has to. I just wish I could figure out what.”

Mr. P. rested his hand on my arm for a moment. “I’m going to see what I can find out about the piece in the museum’s collection. Maybe we can figure out how Leila ended up with her netsuke.” He picked up his laptop and headed back to his sunporch office.

I was too restless to go back to paperwork. I called Jackson to accept his dinner invitation and checked the Web site for orders. It seemed far-fetched to think a tiny little carving, no more than an inch by an inch and a half, could hold the key to the accident that had put Leila in a coma and to the murder of her best friend, but it was all we had right now. I headed downstairs to the shop.

In the following couple of hours I sold a Martin guitar, two quilts and four of Avery’s map-covered lampshades and I polished every mirrored or glass surface in the shop. It was close to closing time when Rose appeared in the doorway to the workroom and smiled at me. I walked over to her. I felt certain Mr. P. had brought her up to date.

“Alfred has something he’d like to show you,” she said. “I’ll stay here and help Avery.” Avery was in the middle of showing the grandparents of a nine-year-old a dressing table I’d refinished about a month ago. Based on the couple’s body language I didn’t think she needed any help making the sale.

Mr. P. was at his desk, making notes on a lined yellow pad with a fine-tipped black pen.

“Rose said you had something to show me?” I said, poking my head around the doorframe.

“I think I’ve traced Leila’s netsuke,” he said. “Elizabeth has a connection to someone on the board of the Metropolitan Museum.”

It really didn’t surprise me that Liz had that kind of connection.

“She put me together with one of the curators at the museum. It turns out they had tried to buy the other ducks when they went up for sale about two and a half years ago.”

I sat on the edge of his desk. “They didn’t succeed.”

He shook his head.

Then it hit me what he’d said. “Ducks.” Plural. “Wait a minute,” I said. “There was more than one duck?”

Mr. P. beamed like he was the teacher and I was his star pupil. “Yes, my dear. Both of them”—he looked down at his notes—“were purchased by a private collector somewhere in New England. It seems that for a time netsuke were popular as a token between lovers and it cut into the museum’s ability to expand their collection. So far I’ve had no luck getting the collector’s name.” He paused for a moment. “There are still a couple of techniques I haven’t tried yet.”

I nodded. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be too crazy about those techniques so it was probably better I didn’t ask about them. I glanced at the computer screen. Mr. P. had several photos open on the computer, one overlapping the other. In one of them I spotted Davis Abbott holding up a beer. “What are those?” I asked.

“The photos that young Mr. Abbott said he would send. He finally did.” He brought the image of Davis holding his beer—and obviously intoxicated—to the forefront. “I have to say I don’t understand some people’s propensity for documenting everything they do with a photograph, but it does make my work much easier sometimes.” He minimized the image and brought up the remaining half dozen one at a time. Davis’s one-night stand was visible in three of them. In one she appeared to be on his lap.

The last photo looked to have been taken in a lawyer’s office.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Remember Davis admitted he got a copy of the trust agreement?” Mr. P. said. “He took it with him when he went to see Leila about challenging the trust.”

I frowned at him. “I remember. How did he do that, by the way? No lawyer would just hand that document over to him.”

“I wondered the same thing. It turns out Stevie asked Marguerite’s lawyer for a copy of the document. Davis picked it up.” He raised an eyebrow.