“No,” Cady said. “She didn’t tell me anything.”
“How typical.” Hattie made a tut-tutting sound. “No offense, my dear, I have nothing but respect and admiration for your late aunt, but she did tend to be somewhat obsessive when it came to keeping secrets.”
“That’s true.”
“Well, then, I see that it is up to me to explain the matter to you.” Hattie put her sherry glass down, grasped her cane and pushed herself up out of the wingback chair. “Come with me, please. I’d better show you the table first. Then we can all make a good deal more sense out of this conversation.
She led them down a long hall to another room at the back of the apartment. A gleaming table was positioned beneath a crystal chandelier. Mack recognized the early-nineteenth-century style and the glow of old hardwood that had been lovingly polished over the years.
“This is the piece that I acquired on Jonathan Arden’s advice,” Hattie announced with a theatrical flourish. “It was delivered shortly after Vesta died. I never got the chance to show it to her so that she could confirm her suspicions.”
Cady stopped a few feet away from the table. Mack watched her face as she contemplated the piece for a few minutes. Her concentration was so intense, he could almost feel the invisible energy humming through her. After a while, she went forward and drew her finger lightly across the wood and metal inlays that decorated the table.
“It looks like a Thomas Hope design.” She went down on her knees and examined the gilt bronze mounts. “There’s a very similar example in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration. That would date it to the Regency period—1810 or thereabouts.”
“That’s what Jonathan Arden told me.” Hattie gave another small sniff of disdain. “He claimed that he could feel the emanations of violence in the vicinity of the table. Something about a duel and drops of blood having fallen on the surface, if you can believe it.”
Mack walked closer to the table. “How did the deal work? I assume Arden charged you a fee for giving you his so-called professional opinion?”
“Yes, indeed,” Hattie said. “Quite a hefty fee, I might add. But not any more than I would have paid any outside consultant.”
Cady crawled under the table. “Just one problem. This piece is a forgery. Beautifully done, I admit, but definitely late twentieth century, not Regency.”
“No, no, no, my dear,” Hattie said. “You still don’t understand. The problem is not that it is a very fine forgery, just as Vesta anticipated. The problem is that I purchased it at the Austrey-Post gallery.”
Cady froze under the table. Then, very slowly, she scrambled out from beneath it and got to her feet. She gazed at Hattie with an expression of fixed intensity. “Austrey-Post?”
“Yes, dear. The same place where Arden took the gentleman who suffered from dementia to buy his chair. Your aunt was convinced that Stanford Felgrove and Randall Post are running fakes through their galleries.”
Two hours later Mack followed Cady through the front door of the villa. By silent, mutual assent they headed straight for the kitchen. Mack opened a cupboard and took down a bottle of cognac. Cady started pacing. He poured the contents into two snifters and handed one of the glasses to her.
She did not pause. She simply snapped the snifter out of his hand as she went past on her way to the far end of the kitchen.
“You do realize what this means?” she asked. “If Aunt Vesta believed that Austrey-Post was engaging in deliberate fraud, she would have called off the merger in a heartbeat. She would never have allowed Chatelaine’s to be tainted.”
He leaned back against the counter and tasted the cognac before he responded.
“You’re sure the table was phony?” he asked.
“Positive.” She waved one hand impatiently. “The veneer work was a little off for the period.”
“Could have been a mistake. Old furniture is like armor. A lot of reproductions are good enough to fool the experts. You know that as well as I do. Even the big auction houses and galleries get burned. Austrey-Post may be an innocent victim here, just like Arden’s clients. You said yourself, the craftsmanship on that table was world-class. Maybe it was good enough to fool the Austrey-Post experts.”
Cady shook her head swiftly. “Jonathan Arden’s involvement makes it look like a deliberate scam. He must have had cooperation inside Austrey-Post. You heard Hattie. Once he thought he had her hooked, he directed her toward that particular piece of furniture.”
“I heard.” Mack swirled the cognac in his glass while he ran through the implications. “I wrote down every detail you listed when you examined the table. I’ll feed the data to the computer tonight. This is the kind of job it does very well. Given what we have, it shouldn’t be hard to identify the source of the forgeries. Probably one of the little European operations. They’ve got some unbelievably skilled people working in them right now. Nothing like old-world craftsmanship, you know.”
“Why bother tracking down the source?” She halted at the far end of the kitchen, swung around and started back toward the stove. “We already know that the pieces Arden is pushing are frauds. What’s the point in identifying the producer?”
“We can use all the information we can get.”
“Forget it. Tracing the source is a waste of time. If it’s one of the little Euro operations, we probably won’t even be able to get it closed down. It will just claim that it’s a legitimate business creating high-end reproductions. Not its fault someone in the U.S. is selling their products as originals. Come on, Mack, you know how it works.”
“I know,” he said calmly. “But I also know that you can’t have too much information. The bigger the picture, the easier it is to detect a pattern. And the easier it is to see the shifts in that pattern.”
She halted in the middle of the kitchen and gave him a wryly apologetic look. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to growl at you. I’m a little tense tonight.”
“You’ve got a right, given the circumstances.”
“Poor Aunt Vesta.” Cady swallowed the last of the cognac and turned the glass between her palms. “She must have been beside herself when she first began to suspect that she was within a hair’s breadth of linking Chatelaine’s with a gallery that was deliberately selling fakes. And the fact that it was Austrey-Post, of all places, would really have hurt. She had a history with that firm. We all do.”
“A history named Randall Post.
Her eyes widened. “Are you crazy? Randall’s not involved in this. He can’t possibly know anything about the frauds.”
“You can’t know that for certain, Cady.”
“I do know it for certain. I refuse to believe that Randall is aware of what’s going on with those bad pieces of furniture. He doesn’t even spend a lot of time at Austrey-Post headquarters…His work is in the field. He maintains connections with important people in the art world. He brings in the major consignments. Handles the high-end clients. He certainly doesn’t keep tabs on the day-today backroom operations of the firm.”
“Take it easy. I’m just mentioning obvious possibilities.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “Randall is not one of them.”
He felt his temper start to fray. “Look, just because he’s your ex-husband doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of fraud.”
“He’s not just my ex, he’s my friend. Damn it, Mack, trust me. Randall would not sell fakes and forgeries.”
“You can’t be absolutely sure of that.”
“I’ve known him all of my life.”
“Sure. In fact, you know Randall Post so well that you married him without being aware of the fact that he was harboring a grand passion for another woman.”
Outrage flared. Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the snifter, he was afraid the fragile glass would shatter. When she opened her mouth, he braced himself for the storm.
But instead of escalating the quarrel another notch, she abruptly spun around and walked to the nearest counter. She set down her glas
s with extreme care. When she turned back to look at him, he saw that she was still angry but she had herself under tight control.
“As long as we are examining possibilities,” she said evenly, “let’s start with Stanford Felgrove. I have never liked that man and Aunt Vesta didn’t care much for him, either.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got no problem with putting Stanford Felgrove on our list of people who might be working with Arden.”
A short silence descended on the kitchen.
After a while, Cady resumed her pacing.
“My aunt went to a lot of trouble to keep her little sting operation very quiet, didn’t she?” she said reflectively. “As far as we know, she confided only in Hattie and that was because she needed Hattie’s skills as an actress.”
“Vesta had several good reasons for keeping things under wraps,” he pointed out. “She was considering a merger with Austrey-Post. She had to find out exactly what was going on inside the firm before she made a move.”
Cady hugged herself tightly. “Yes. Given her long-term association with Austrey-Post, she would not have wanted to start a lot of nasty rumors about the firm. Even when she was sure of her facts she would have tried to handle things quietly. Gossip about fraud and forgery does no one in the business any good.”
“True.”
She stopped again and looked at him. “I’ve been on the wrong track here, haven’t I?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it. I was convinced that Vesta’s murder was somehow connected to the merger. But this fraud thing puts a new light on it. I know you keep saying that con artists are not big on homicide, but we are talking a lot of money here. Do you have any idea how much old furniture is worth in today’s market? It’s not uncommon for good pieces to go for half a million to a million. And the market is getting stronger. Demand has been growing steadily in recent years.”
“I’m aware of that,” he reminded her dryly. “I’m in the business, if you will recall.”
She flushed and then rushed ahead with the remainder of her lecture. “Apparently, Arden has already moved several very expensive pieces through Austrey-Post. We don’t know what his cut was, but I suspect that he stood to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe a lot more, if he was exposed.”
He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “All right, you’ve made your point. When it comes to murder, money is one of the big three motives.”
“I think Jonathan Arden murdered my aunt so that she couldn’t expose his scam.”
He looked at her for a long time.
“You may be right,” he said at last.
Nineteen
At two thirty in the morning, Cady abandoned the effort to sleep. Forcing herself to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling was only making her more jittery.
She shoved aside the covers, got to her feet and found her robe. Padding barefoot across the antique carpet to the window, she looked out over the bay toward the city. The fog had thickened noticeably since she and Mack had driven back across the Golden Gate Bridge. All she could see now was an otherworldly glow emanating from San Francisco.
She gazed into the fathomless mist and thought about her enigmatic, difficult, self-contained aunt.
You’re so like her, my dear.
You’ve got your aunt’s eye for art and antiques.
You’re the living image of Vesta.
Vesta was never very good with men, either.
And now Vesta was dead.
She was brooding again. This was not helpful. She wondered if Mack was in bed asleep or if he was still working with the computer. It would be easy enough to find out if he was awake. All she had to do was go downstairs to the study and look.
She turned away from the window, went to the door and stepped out into the hall. She stood for a moment, listening. The silence was as thick as the San Francisco fog.
She hurried downstairs. When she turned the corner in the lower hall she saw the blue-green light of the computer screen spilling through the open doorway. Mack was awake and working.
She moved quietly to the doorway and came to a halt. Mack was seated at the desk, staring into the depths of the computer screen. He was dressed in a black crew-neck T-shirt and a pair of khakis. Not the trousers he had worn to dinner at Hattie’s, she noticed. Somewhere along the line he had changed clothes. Light glinted on the lenses of his glasses. His hair was rumpled as if he had been running his fingers through it.
“Couldn’t sleep, either, huh?” He did not take his attention away from the screen.
“No.” She moved into the room. “What are you doing?”
“Thought I’d see if the computer could come up with anything useful.”
“Has it?”
“No. Not yet. But there’s still hope.” He finally looked at her, frowning slightly. “Does that strict company policy of yours allow you to be alone in a small room with an employee of the opposite sex at this time of night?”
“Two thirty in the morning is not a good time to taunt your employer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She ignored his soft sarcasm and sat down on the opposite side of the desk. Belatedly it occurred to her that he had a point about the late hour and the limited confines of the study. The intense intimacy of the situation hit her without warning. A shiver of awareness went through her.
Maybe she should have checked company policy before coming here tonight.
Striving for a little nonchalance, she leaned back in the chair and thrust her hands into the deep pockets of the robe. “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What’s that?”
She hesitated. “If we’re right about all of this, if Jonathan Arden is working with someone at Austrey-Post, that inside person doesn’t have to be at the top of the organizational chart. He or she could be one of the old furniture experts on the staff. Someone who knows that side of the business. Someone with the right contacts in Europe.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t sound impressed with my deductions.”
He looked up briefly. “I’ve already run everyone on the staff of Austrey-Post through the database. I got zilch.”
“Where did you get a list of the employees?”
“Found it in your aunt’s files. Looks like she might have been trying to spot a likely insider, too. But she didn’t have the aid of a computer.”
“No, but she had been in the business for a very long time. She knew a lot of the players, good guys and bad.” Cady sank deeper into her chair. “So much for that brainstorm.”
“You don’t have to give up on it entirely. I told you, no database is perfect. If this insider hasn’t ever been caught or implicated in previous scams, he won’t be in my files.” Mack paused. “You know, the idea that he’s one of the old furniture experts makes a lot of sense.
“It would certainly explain how the pieces could be routinely authenticated before going out onto the gallery floor,” she said quickly.
He gave her a wry look. “You mean without involving Randall Post?”
“Well, yes.”
“Your scenario also avoids implicating Stanford Felgrove. Why protect him? You said you didn’t like him much.”
“I don’t.” She hesitated. “But I don’t have any reason to think he’d be guilty of running fakes through his gallery. Neither did Aunt Vesta, apparently.”
“Your aunt didn’t get very far in her investigations. She had just barely sprung her trap for Jonathan Arden before she died.”
“Or was murdered,” Cady said.
“Or was murdered,” he agreed evenly.
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “I admit that I’m biased against Stanford because of his history with Randall. But even so, it’s hard to see him as a killer. I’ve known the man for years. We all have. There’s never been any reason to think he was capable of violence. Even Randall will tell you that Stanford was never physically abusive.”
“Doesn�
�t sound like Randall spent much time in his own home after Stanford arrived on the scene as his stepfather. From what everyone says, the Briggs clan pretty much made him an honorary member of the family.”
“Well, that’s true. Still, Stanford Felgrove as a killer is hard to envision.”
“You probably can’t see anyone you know as a killer,” Mack said quietly. “Few people can.”
“Agreed. It’s certainly easier to imagine a stranger like Jonathan Arden in that role.” Unable to sit still any longer, she got to her feet and went to the French doors.
She stood looking out at the shadowed terrace. The pool lights were off tonight. The surface of the water was dark and implacable. Anything could be waiting down there in the depths.
“Cady?”
She turned quickly. “What?”
“Just wondered what you were thinking.” Absently he removed his glasses and set them on the desk. He regarded her with somber consideration. “You all right?”
“Yes, of course.” She grasped the lapels of her robe. “I was thinking, that’s all. Maybe the time has come to go to the cops.”
“Nothing I’d like better, believe me. But what do we give them?”
“We can’t prove murder, but we do have strong evidence of a forgery scheme.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “You know better than that. You’ve been in this business all your life.”
She groaned. “You’re right. With what we’ve got now, everyone involved can claim to be innocent. The explanation will be that the experts inside Austrey-Post made some mistakes and failed to spot the forgeries.”
“Happens all the time, even at the most prestigious galleries and auction houses and museums. When the fakes are pointed out, you apologize and refund the client’s money. That’s the end of it. I doubt if we’d even get far trying to pin a scam charge on Arden. The bottom line is that all he really did was help sell a piece of furniture that had been authenticated by a reputable gallery. No crime in that. Just one more screw-up by a paid consultant.”