Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The bell above the door of Sloan’s Antiques announced them before Nans could decide on what to say to get Beatrice talking.
Beatrice looked up from behind the counter. She took in all five of them and said, “I’m not buying anything today.”
“We’re not selling,” Nans said. “We want to talk about why you’ve been closed.”
“Private buyer.” Beatrice straightened a letter opener that didn’t need straightening. “And before you ask — client confidentiality.”
Ida made a sound.
Beatrice looked at her. Ida looked back, the picture of innocence.
The shop smelled like old wood and beeswax polish and the particular dusty sweetness of things that had been sitting in the same place for decades. Every surface held something — candlesticks, framed maps, stacked china, a gilt clock that had stopped keeping time decades ago.
“What do you actually want,” Beatrice said.
“We want to talk about the cat,” Nans said. “The porcelain one that Everett Pike had in the Cup and Cake.”
Beatrice’s expression didn’t change, exactly. Something behind it did. “I remember.”
“You told him it wasn’t worth what he thought,” Lexy said.
“I told him it was worth twenty-five dollars. Because it was worth twenty-five dollars.” She paused. “Did it also happen to take him down a peg? Yes. But the number was real.”
“Very,” Helen said, in her gentlest voice, which somehow landed harder than if she’d shouted it.
Beatrice set the letter opener down.
“Everett was insufferable,” she said, with the calm delivery of someone stating a well-established fact.
“He came to every estate sale and every yard sale in a fity-mile radius and always acted like he’d personally discovered the concept of antiques.
He talked over sellers, he lowballed widows, and he once told me in front of a room full of people that I’d misdated a piece of Limoges.
” She paused. “He was wrong about the Limoges.”
“Tell us about the cat,” Nans said.
Beatrice reached under the counter and produced a large catalog — the kind with a cracked spine and dozens of bookmarked pages, the reference material of someone who’d been in the trade a long time. She set it on the counter and opened it to a marked page.
The photograph showed a porcelain cat, elegant and detailed, seated on an ornate gilt base with fine hand-painted markings. The caption beneath it listed a maker, a date, and an auction estimate that made Ruth look up from her iPad.
“That,” Beatrice said, “is the original. Meissen, circa 1880. If Everett had walked in with that, I’d have told him to drive straight to Boston and not stop.”
“But he didn’t have that,” Lexy said.
“No. What Everett had was this.” She turned two pages to a second photograph.
A similar cat — same general shape, same seated posture — but the differences were visible even to Lexy.
The markings less refined. The base heavier, simpler.
Bronze instead of gilt. “Decorative reproduction. Made to look like the real thing for people who wanted the look without the price. It’s only about sixty years old.
Pretty enough and has a secret compartment in the base.
Worth twenty-five dollars to someone who liked cats on their mantelpiece. ”
“So whoever took it from Everett probably thought they had the valuable one,” Ruth said.
“If they knew about the original at all.” Beatrice closed the catalog. “Most people wouldn’t. You’d have to know what you were looking at.”
“The secret compartment,” Nans said. She was still looking at the photograph of the reproduction. “The one Everett bought had one of those?”
Beatrice glanced at her. A small pause — the kind that meant the question was more interesting than expected. “I assume so. People used them to store small items. A key, jewelry.” She shrugged. “Usually empty. Usually nothing.”
“Usually,” Nans said.
Beatrice looked at her. “I wouldn’t know what was in Everett’s.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Ida had stopped chewing.
“What about the rest of what he had?” Helen asked. “The cocktail shaker, the sugar tongs, the class ring?”
Beatrice leaned on the counter. “Cocktail shaker — depends on the maker, could be fifteen dollars, could be forty. Sugar tongs, were they monogrammed?”
“Jack didn’t say,” Lexy said.
“If they were they’re worth next to nothing. Monogrammed stuff sits forever. But Everett knew that so I doubt he would buy anything monogrammed. Still only worth about thirty bucks.”
“Why kill him then?” Ida said, with a cheese cracker halfway to her mouth.
Nobody had an answer.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Beatrice said.
“Not today,” Nans said. “Thank you, Bea.”
Outside, the cold hit them all at once. Ruth pulled her coat closed. Ida located a wrapped mint in her coat pocket and looked pleased about it.
“So,” Lexy said. “Twenty-five dollars.”
“Which means either the killer had no idea what they had,” Ruth said, “or the cat wasn’t the point.”.
“The compartment,” Lexy said.
“The compartment,” Nans agreed. “Someone may not have wanted the cat at all. They wanted what was inside it.” She turned back to the street. “It doesn’t get us to the killer. But it changes what we’re looking for.”
They stood on the sidewalk in a loose cluster. The theory sat there, new and unhelpful in the particular way of theories that open doors without telling you what’s behind them.
“What we do have,” Nans said, “is a time window. Ten to ten-thirty.”
“Which is useless,” Ruth said, “unless we know where our suspects were during that window.”
“This town has no cameras,” Lexy said.
“No,” Nans agreed.
A beat.
Then Lexy said: “But we know someone who does.”
Ruth looked up from her iPad.
Nans almost smiled. “Trash-to-Cash Tina.”
“She had that phone running the whole morning,” Lexy said.
“Every stall, every seller, every find. If Everett was killed between ten and ten-thirty and we can see our suspects on Tina’s video at that time it could rule them out.
Not to mention that if she is the killer she won’t have any videos for that time span. ”
“And most of Tina’s videos are online.,” Ruth finished. She was already typing.
Ida unwrapped her mint. “I’ve been saying from the start that woman was useful.”
“You called her annoying,” Ruth said.
“Both things can be true,” Ida said, and popped the mint in.