Brett Halliday - Last Seen Hitchhiking

She checked herself, adjusted her glasses again, and said slowly, “Did she pinch the Toltec mask?”

“A piece of it,” Frieda said.

“Terrific!” Maxine said with enthusiasm. “No wonder Sam was so quick to bring in detectives. I’ve heard of you, Shayne, the prices you charge. I knew it couldn’t be anything small. Now wait a minute. Wait one minute.”

She slid the glasses back and forth along the well-traveled half inch. “That’s what those guys were after. They thought it was here.”

“What did you tell the chick,” Andy said, “that if she wanted to shoplift something, you’d handle it for her?”

“No, no, no. She showed me a Kodachrome and she wanted me to give her a rough idea of how much it was worth. The quality, Andy! Sometimes you can’t tell from a photograph. The colors come out brighter than they really are. But this looked fantastic. Sam was authenticating it, I don’t know who for. If she knew, she didn’t tell me.”

“Holloway says he bought it in Colombia,” Frieda said.

“If so,” Maxine said, as her glasses slid, “that’s going to put him in a different bracket. He’s always been the technician, not the dealer. Of course he does love money. He was always talking about some pot or some clay dog he could have bought for fifty dollars that went for five thousand at Parke-Bernet. Interesting! Very.”

“Baby, a mask?” Andy said. “I don’t visualize it.”

“A mosaic,” she explained. “Colored chips on terracotta. Onyx, turquoise, jadeite, red crysolite. Human teeth, two fangs. Resin. A beard may have been attached to it once, not as wild as yours. There are some examples around — Chicago has one that’s eighty percent intact. The point is, this is one hundred percent, or ninety-nine plus, in mint condition. It was found in pieces, but all the pieces were there and the breaks ran along the mosaic lines, so putting it together was no job at all. Maybe something else of the same quality has been found while I haven’t been paying attention, but I doubt it. If it’s the only one of its kind, only the richest museums are going to be able to afford it, and that’s what I told her. Then I got to wondering. I happened to see that Tree was down for some kind of directors’ meeting. I called him. You get cautious awfully fast in that business, but he agreed — cautiously — that a mask like that might command a rather high price. He himself, in light of the stock market slide and the tightness of his board of trustees, wouldn’t be able to bid on it, which was too bad because he’s getting a big exhibition ready and he needs something spectacular to top it off.”

“Has it been offered to him?” Frieda asked.

Maxine hesitated. “I think so. He didn’t admit it to me.”

“When you say a high price, how high?”

“How high is up? How much do you think these pieces of Andy’s are worth? They’re worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them. They ought to sell for about a thousand apiece, and it’s my prediction that that’s going to happen someday. Right now, write him a check for a hundred dollars and you can have all three.”

“Sweetheart,” Andy said.

“They know I’m not serious, I’m making a point. A broken mask, like the one in Chicago, might go for nine or ten thou. A few years ago an intact mask like this one, with the right kind of papers, verified by a top expert like Holloway, well, thirty or forty thousand. But funny things have been happening lately. Five and a half million for a not very good Velásquez. Etruscan kraters. Seventy thousand used to be high. All at once along came a perfect example by the best-known Greek master, and everybody wanted it. Money was available, because gifts to museums are tax-deductible. A record-breaking price brings people into museums, not to see a famous piece of art, but to see a piece of art that has changed hands at a famous price. That’s how museums measure success, by the number of people they draw. So the krater went for a million three. Maybe the same kind of breakthrough could happen here. People have been saying for years that pre-Columbian was the next hot category. In an auction situation, with half a dozen hungry museums bidding—” She stopped, and looked grave. “A half million?”

“I did hear you say a half million dollars,” Andy said. “I know it sounds crazy, but one of these days pre-Columbian’s going through the roof. It has to happen. And this might be the piece to start it.”

“It’s disgusting. Why do any of us bother?”

“Did Meri tell you about any offers for it?”

“She wasn’t giving away anything more than she had to. But you realize, don’t you, that this whole traffic is highly illegal? Every Central American country has laws against export. To get to the United States, it has to be stolen first, then smuggled. Sam used to stay out of that whole end. The academic expert, clean hands. Always a witness, never a defendant. I hope you don’t think he really bought it in Colombia? Bullshit. What if Meri knew where he really got it? She’s an intelligent girl, privy to his secrets, as we say. She could blow him out of the water if she was feeling mean enough — get the mask confiscated and sent back. Money and effort wasted.”

She came forward and let go of Andy’s hand to make her gestures more emphatic. “Did Sam know she was going to be hitchhiking?”

“He overheard a phone call.”

“Then what if he’s the one who stopped and picked her up? Do you like that theory?”

“And killed her?” Shayne said.

“Taking advantage of all the furor about the hitchhiking murderer. Now you’re going to ask me if he’s capable of it. I lived with him five long hard years. If the price is right,” she said grimly, “he’s capable of it.”

Andy moved uneasily.

“All right, I know,” she said. “The ex-wife speaking. Frankly, I hate him.”

“But tactically,” Andy said, “it might be smarter to let these people figure some of this out for themselves. You did call the museum guy. Guys with guns did walk in and tie you up and take the place apart.”

“I admit I can’t explain it.”

“Maxine, honey,” Andy said gently, taking her hand again, “you’ve got to try, or they’ll go away thinking you’re the mastermind.”

Maxine said helplessly, “Somebody already thinks that. But who? Sam? Ellie Tree? I only had one conversation with the girl! I didn’t give her any advice on how she could screw Sam. I’m an innocent bystander.”

“I believe you,” Andy said, “and I just hope they do, because I’ve heard of Shayne, too, and I’ve heard he’s a bad man to have mad at you.”

Frieda took out her photographs. “I want to be sure this is the same girl and the same mask.”

“That’s Meri Gillespie,” Maxine said. “And that’s the picture she showed me. Do you see what I mean? My God! It leaps out at you. If it has that same quality in three dimensions, it’ll really pull people in. I hope to hell it hasn’t been dumped in some swamp somewhere. Well, I hope she hasn’t either, but there are plenty of young girls. This mask is one of a kind.”

Andy took the picture. “Half a million bucks? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Mike, any questions?” Frieda said.

“You helped with his textbook, Mrs. Holloway. Do you get any royalties?”

“I do not,” Maxine snapped. “Nor do I get any alimony, which is something I don’t happen to believe in. I do believe in royalties, but unfortunately my name doesn’t appear on the copyright page or in the contract. At the time I didn’t think it mattered. We were husband and wife, so why be picky? And a year after the divorce, the book began to move.”

“Did Meri mention anything to you about somebody named Sid Koch?”