Chapter Eleven #2
“Teapot,” I said. “It’s the blue one.”
Annette exhaled, breaking into the smallest of smiles. “Yes, your teapot, of course. Let me get that for you,” she said, turning to go.
“And Echo’s vase too,” I added.
Annette’s shoulders stiffened visibly. “Well, as you may remember, Echo doesn’t want—”
“This time’s a little different,” I said, sharpening my tone. “This time we’re gonna treat Echo like any other subject of your royal court. She made a vase, and I’m here to pick it up along with my teapot. Again, it’s the blue one that looks like a child painted it as a form of anger management.”
“Well, Archer, we both know Miss Echo isn’t like my other patrons. I don’t even charge her.”
I pulled out my wallet, removed every bill inside of it, did a quick count, and held it out in front of Annette.
“Here’s a little over seventeen hundred dollars. You take this and bring me back Echo’s vase and my shitty teapot and we’ll call this good, alright?”
Annette smirked, folding her arms. “And if I refuse?”
I smiled. “Then you get to see me act like the kind of biker you imagine me to be.”
She stopped smirking.
“Take the fucking money and get our shit.” I leaned in. “Right now.”
In the end, Annette made the right choice. Even going so far as to carefully wrap and box up our pieces for safe transport on the back of my bike.
I headed to the new clubhouse in Ridgefield, happy to find the place pretty dead for a Friday night.
“Where is everybody?” I asked Buzz, who was behind the bar, cleaning up.
“RatHound show at the amphitheater,” he replied. “A bunch of brothers and their old ladies went. Even Charley took a few friends.”
Charleston (or Charley as everyone called her) was Maverick and Lily’s eldest daughter and about to graduate high school. She was cool as fuck and I wasn’t surprised she’d tagged along with her grandpas to the concert. Hawk and Ace were her heroes.
“Rex hooked them all up with VIP seats, backstage passes, and shit,” Buzz continued.
Back in the day, when RatHound were just local heroes, some of the OG dogs worked security at their shows.
One of those guys even became a part of the band’s permanent road crew, not that the Dogs needed an inside man.
Rex Haddon, Rathound’s lead singer, along with the rest of the band, never forgot about the Dogs.
Making sure the club was always well stocked with swag and tickets to local shows.
“What’s in the box?” Buzz asked.
“Uh, ceramics,” I said, quietly. The last thing I needed was my brothers busting my balls for doing arts and crafts on a date.
“Oh, yeah. Who made ’em?”
“This woman I’m dating. It’s something she does. As a hobby. You know?”
“Well, let’s see ‘em,” Buzz demanded, handing me the knife from the bar top’s garnish station.
“Uh, sure,” I said, carefully opening the box and unpacking its contents.
Buzz let out a low whistle. “I don’t know anything about ceramics but that one’s beautiful,” he said, pointing to Echo’s vase.
Beautiful was an understatement. The vase was a work of art.
Echo wasn’t kidding when she told me glaze ‘comes to life’ in the kiln.
What looked like murky drips and drabs while she was applying the glaze, now looked like explosions of red and silver.
Textured layers of glitter sparkled from within the cascading colors.
I’d never seen anything quite like it and now understood what Queen Annette was going on about.
“But, she’s clearly still got a lot to learn,” Buzz said pointing to my Teapot. “My niece coulda painted that one.”
“Everyone’s a fuckin’ critic,” I snapped, putting the teapot back in the box.
“Oh, shit,” he laughed. “That one was yours, wasn’t it? You made that, didn’t you?”
As if on cue, what seemed like half of the club burst through the clubhouse doors, riding high on a post-concert high.
“Oh, shit,” I said, quickly sealing up the box and handing it to Buzz. “Stash this behind the bar. I’ll grab it later. Quickly before someone sees it.”
Buzz continued laughing but did as I asked, Echo’s vase remained next to me, on the bar.
Charley came up to the bar to order a round of sodas for her and her friends when she spotted Echo’s vase. Charley was about to start her freshman year of College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, where she’d spent the past two summers interning as a master potter’s assistant.
“How did you like the show?” I asked.
“It was great,” she replied, enthusiastically. “My friends and I had never been to a big rock show like that. It was super cool. We’re all totally obsessed with RatHound now. We were already building our own playlists during the car ride here.”
“Glad to hear the rumors of the demise of Rock and Roll have been greatly exaggerated,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” Charley gasped. “Where did you get an Edgar Wickens?”
“A what?”
“Is that your vase?”
“Well, yeah. I guess I just bought it, but—”
“How did you manage to buy an Edgar Wickens vase?”
“I don’t know who Edgar Wickens is.”
“He’s kind of like the Banksy of pottery. His pieces started popping up on auction sites about three years ago and have gained in popularity and value ever since. Over the last two years, he has managed his own private web gallery and auction site all while remaining completely anonymous.”
I shrugged. “Echo Weston, this woman I’m dating, or I guess she’s my girlfriend now, I dunno. Anyway, she made that last night. Well, at least she glazed it last night. I watched her do it.”
“Your girlfriend glazed this?”
“And threw it. I just wasn’t there for that part.”
“Well, she’s clearly heavily influenced by Wickens’s work. No doubt about it. I mean, you could have told me it was one of his works and I would have believed you.”
“I don’t know. She never mentioned Edgar Wickens’s name or anyone else’s as far as I can remember. In fact, she said she lets each piece tell her what it wants to look like.”
Charley pulled out her phone, tapped away at the screen for fifteen seconds and then held the screen up for me to see. “This is Edgar Wickens’s official website. Look at those and tell me you don’t see a striking similarity to your girlfriend’s vase.”
I didn’t know the first thing about fine art, but Charley was right. Echo’s vase looked like it would be right at home within Wickens’s works. I handed Charley’s phone back, pulled out my own and called Echo.
“Well, hey there,” she answered. “I was just thinking about you.”
“I like the sound of that,” I replied. “But, before we get into all that, I’m gonna send you a link to a website and I want you to take a look at it.”
“Sure, okay. What’s this about?”
“Just tell me if you’ve heard of this guy or know of his work?”
I sent Echo the link and the line went silent for thirty seconds.
“You still there?” I asked.
“I…I don’t understand,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “Who is Edgar Wickens?”
“So, you’ve never heard of him?”
“No, and I don’t understand why my pieces are on his website or why some of them say sold on the picture. Seventeen hundred dollars? This one says two thousand dollars. What is this?”
“Sweetheart, I think Annette has been stealing your pottery and selling it online as Edgar Wickens.”
“But she told me that she gives them all to Houses for Humans. Maybe an employee within their organization is behind this.”
“I’m sorry, Echo. I think Annette has been playing you all along. I think she’s taken advantage of you. Preyed on your kindness and goodness.”
“Why would she do this?” Echo asked through quiet sobs.
Hearing her cry made me see red.
“She did it because she’s greedy. She did it to fund her kingdom. She did it to pay for her little castle. And now, I’m gonna burn it and her right to the fucking ground.”
“Archer?” Mack settled a beefy hand on my shoulder. “What’s goin’ on, bud?”
“Baby, I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and filled Mack in on everything I knew.
“Charley?” he called, and she came bouncing over to us.
“Hey, Uncle Mack.”
“Hey, sweetheart.” He gave her a quick hug. “You’re the expert on all things pottery, so you know for a fact this is Edgar Wickens?”
She bobbed her head, taking the vase and examining the bottom. “There! A tiny little E.W. on the edge. Do you see it?”
“Holy shit,” I breathed out, examining it. “You’d need a magnifying glass if you didn’t know what to look for. Annette must have done that before she baked it or whatever.”
Charley chuckled. “Fired.”
“Yeah, sure, that. ”
“She’s probably made hundreds of thousands off of her,” Charley said.
“Seriously?” I asked.
Charley nodded. “Yes. Seriously.”
“Your dad and I’ll start diggin’,” Mack said. “Then we’ll burn her shit to the ground.”
I palmed an eye socket. “Fuck.”
“Did you take pictures of her with the vase before she painted it?” Mack asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good.” He smiled. “Find out if she took pictures before she, uh, baked it.”
“Fired it,” Charley corrected.
“Yeah, that,” Mack said.
I nodded. “Okay, I will. I’m gonna head out.”
“Don’t say shit to Annette, and for the love of god, don’t fuck her shit up yet. Let me and your dad get information first.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know me.”
Mack turned to Charley. “Need you to keep this confidential, too, sweetheart, okay?”
She grinned. “Only if I can be there when you bring her down. I hate thieves.”
“You bet,” I promised.
“You calm?” Mack asked.
“Yeah, I’m calm.”
“Enough to ride?”
“I’m calm, Mack. Swear.”
He nodded, then let me walk out the door. I gently packed the vase in my saddlebags, climbed on my bike, and headed toward Echo’s, my teapot all but forgotten.