Chapter 6
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It took Doreen a bit to find the way to the gallery room, but, by the time she got all four of them down there, Scott crowed in delight.
Her pets followed along too, yet seemed on alert.
As soon as they all stepped into the room, he froze in complete silence as he stared around, a hint of tears in his eyes.
Turning to her, he asked, “Do you want to keep these or some of them?”
She looked at him and shook her head. “No, not at all. I don’t want to keep any of them.” A look of absolute joy overtook his face. She smiled and told him the words he wanted to hear. “So, I would appreciate it very much if you could sell them for me.”
“Absolutely.” He rubbed his hands together in joy as he turned to look at the one directly in front of him. “You have a complete array here. It’s almost as if Mathew didn’t know what he liked, so he just had a bit of everything.”
“He was a collector but not for the love of art,” she explained.
“He was a collector because he thought it was something that would elevate him from being the slumlord—or within the slumlord lifestyle that he used to live—somehow making him bigger and better.” She shook her head.
“He was not a great person, but I do understand a lot of why he did what he did.”
“Of course,” Scott muttered, staring about. He stopped for another moment, and the look of absolute joy spreading across his face was almost intoxicating.
She smiled at him. “I presume this collection is substantial.”
He nodded. “Yes, absolutely, and substantial hardly seems to be the correct word. You’re truly blessed.”
She shrugged. “And yet, to me, … they’re just paintings.”
“And I get that,” he cried out, “but …”
She looked over at the two brothers, each with big grins on their faces, agreeing with her all the way on this issue. “I get it,” she told Scott, “and that’s why I brought you in to handle the job.”
“It’ll be a big job just to move these,” he muttered, staring around, his hands in prayer mode as he contemplated that. “We’ll have everything flown privately.”
“Rather than commercially?” she asked.
“Yes, of course. We can’t risk having anything damaged. Some of these are the great masterpieces,” he murmured, as he stared at several of them.
“That’s for you to figure out,” she stated cheerfully.
“And I know that this is where you want to stay, that this is where your heart is desperate to live for the next little while, and I promise I’ll let you back in here again, but we do have a bunch of probably lesser-known pieces of furniture and whatnot that I really don’t know anything about.
So I’m hoping you can tell us if they’re something we should sell or just give away as a donation. ”
He faced her, a smile on his lips, and he whispered, “I can’t imagine anything coming out of this house being that level. Then again, depending on the furniture, some of it can be quite valuable, as you already discovered with your grandmother’s collection.”
“I know, but this isn’t Nan’s collection. This is … my ex’s collection.”
He shook his head. “And a fascinating collection it is too,” he muttered, as he was reluctantly led out of the gallery room.
Doreen suggested, “Let’s go upstairs and walk through the house, room by room, and you can tell me yes or no.”
They started with the bedrooms on the second floor.
By the time they had gotten through all the guest bedrooms, he had yet to say no to anything, except for some small decor pieces and unmatched lamps.
When they got to the master suite, he stopped and stared.
“This has got to be the most incredible bedroom collection,” he muttered.
“These are all very old designers, very rare antiques,” he noted, gently touching the items. “This is absolutely incredible.”
Once he had looked at the frame of the king-size bed and the matching set of wardrobes and dressers and nightstands and sitting room pieces, he finally turned to her and said, “I’ll just ask for form. Do you want to keep any of this?”
She shook her head. “No, none of it.”
He gave a small nod, then pulled out his phone and started texting.
“So, we need to get in the furniture experts, and we’ve got to arrange for shipping of all the paintings and almost all the second-floor bedroom sets.
” He looked around the master suite again, noting artwork on the walls.
“The artwork is not just in the basement, is it?”
She replied, “These wouldn’t be as valuable.”
He nodded. “True, but they’re still worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
She heard Mack choke behind her. She watched as his gaze went from the paintings on the wall and back to her. “Poor Mack,” she pointed out to Scott. “He’s really struggling with the idea that anybody had this kind of money for any of this stuff.”
Scott turned and smiled, informing Mack, “Some of the paintings in this house will go for millions.”
Even Doreen was shocked to hear that.
Nick just stared at him, then told Doreen, “I need to raise my rates.”
She laughed. “Yeah, when this job is done.”
He groaned and asked, “Are you kidding me? I should be doing this job on a percentage basis.”
“Ha,” she replied. “You are regretting initially offering to help me pro bono with my stalled divorce. You just want to be part of the wedding party, right?”
“I already am, as the best man to the groom,” he muttered.
She turned to fully take in the master bedroom. “We need to get as much of this removed as quickly as possible,” she said to Scott. “We don’t have a ton of time to just sit around.”
“Sit around?” he repeated, then shook his head and laughed. “You are such a joy to work with.”
Doreen sighed. “Nothing here we are too worried about keeping. We may find bits and pieces. If so, we’ll let you know. Otherwise take it all away.”
“Good enough,” Scott replied, with a huge grin. “And where will you stay while you’re here?”
“We’re sleeping in several of the beds here,” she shared. “Unless … are you telling me we can’t sleep on the beds either?”
Scott winced and turned to the brothers. “They are worth a lot of money.”
“That’s fine,” Mack replied. “We can go buy some sleeping bags.”
Doreen held up one hand. “I think a bunch of camping gear is in the storage room downstairs in the basement,” Doreen announced, pointing in the direction of the gallery.
“Camping?” Mack repeated. “Seems totally unlike Mathew.”
She sighed. “He thought glamping would be chic. He instantly didn’t like it. Anyway all that should still be in that big storage area. So, Scott, if you want us to abandon the beds, we certainly can.”
At that, Scott chuckled. “Perfect. You guys do whatever you want to do with alternate bed setups, and I’ll arrange to get a transport team here as fast as I can.”
“Good enough,” she muttered.
Doreen frowned. “I just thought of something else.”
“Something else?” Nick looked over at her warily.
She shrugged. “Yeah, something else.”
“Something else for me?” Scott asked, turning to her with avid interest.
“I need jewelry evaluated.”
Scott chuckled with interest. “Of course you do.”
“Yeah, there’s quite a bit in that safe.” She looked at Mack and asked, “That’s probably the best answer, isn’t it?”
“I would think so,” he agreed, nodding at Scott. “I’m no judge, but some pretty high-end pieces are in there.”
Scott looked back at her and asked, “You don’t want to keep any?”
“No.”
He grinned. “I won’t say anything against that,” he muttered. “You certainly seem to know your own mind when it comes to these things.”
“I don’t know that I do,” she argued, chuckling. “However, I do know that we’re on the clock for this one.”
“And you’re okay if I organize to get things moved?”
“Yes, absolutely. … I just need receipts, please.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “You can’t even imagine the amount of paperwork that some of these things will generate. May I see the collection?” he asked with delighted anticipation.
Doreen nodded, giving him a smirk. “Of course.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nick added. “I’m not sure I saw any of this.”
She led the way to the safe that held all the jewelry. She keyed in her birthday, got it open, and smiled. She brought out the first couple small boxes and handed them to Scott.
With a reverence that she appreciated, even though she had absolutely zero interest in the contents, both Scott and Nick went through the first two boxes with gasps of admiration, surprise. Nick brought out the rest, and, in a couple of cases, both were shocked at the contents.
When Scott gleefully looked over at her, she muttered, “I know. I know. It’s just too much. And there are good copies of a bunch of these as well.”
“And the good copies are also important,” Scott noted.
“Why the need for good copies?” Nick asked her.
“Because in many cases these pieces are far too valuable to wear out, so extremely high-quality copies were made so that nobody would know.”
He stared at her, but she shrugged. “I was never allowed to wear the real thing. What if I somehow damaged it, broke it, lost it, I don’t know,” she explained, “so, yes, the copies are important.”
She walked over to where she knew most of them were—in a lockbox behind a secret wall panel—and brought them to Scott as well. “An awful lot is here too.”
“And did you want to save anything?” Scott asked her again.
“No, the answer remains no.”
“Not one piece?”
“No,” she repeated, “no to my future daughter, if I have any, no to any other family I may have, no to friends, et cetera. If I am blessed with a daughter at some point in time, I would like for her to have something a whole lot more meaningful than a piece of jewelry from some guy who dumped me like garbage.”
Scott winced at that and then nodded. “An unbelievable amount of money is here, Doreen.”
“I don’t care,” she replied, as she stared at it, then shrugged. “It was such a Mathew thing to do.”
“What was that?” Nick asked her, as he stared around at the sparkling jewels in this room.