Fatal Fixer-Upper (15 page)

So there I was, by myself, outside Professor Wentworth's office, in the middle of a lazy Sunday afternoon with no one else in sight. With nothing to stop me from opening the door and having a look around. Nothing but my own sense of right and wrong, that is.

Naturally, I opened the door and stuck my head in. And recoiled. 'Whoa!'

The word came out sounding a lot louder than I had expected, and I clapped a hand over my mouth and looked around guiltily, just in case someone had heard me. Nothing happened. No one stirred or came to ask what I thought I was doing there. After a moment, I pushed the door open enough to slide into the room beyond. The door closed behind me with a soft
snick
.

I stopped just inside and looked around again, totally overwhelmed. My friend Reba in New York, the pack rat, had nothing on Professor Wentworth. His desk was overflowing with untidy piles of papers, and shelves of books, shoved together helter-skelter, took up one entire wall behind the desk, with more books sitting in stacks along the walls. A coat tree in the corner was buried under clothes, the outermost layer holding the mandatory professorial corduroy blazer with leather patches on the elbows, along with a couple of winter hats, a few scarves, and a wool overcoat. A corkboard on the wall bristled with so many pieces of scrap paper and thumbtacks it resembled a pin cushion. There were lists of names and telephone numbers, probably those of his students. Shannon was listed, and so was Paige, with a last name of Thompson. Josh wasn't. There were college memos, cutouts from the local newspaper, and receipts for things like copy paper and toner cartridges. Among the items was a replica of a painting of a woman with a powdered wig, dressed in a burgundy velvet gown with a gold brocade undergown and a lacy fichu. I'm no expert, but I was pretty sure I recognized Marie Antoinette. Granted, any portrait of an elegant eighteenth-century lady with powdered hair and nice clothes looks very much like another, but I'd spent a large part of yesterday reading a book with a painting of Marie Antoinette on the cover, and I was fairly certain that's who I was looking at. That was another connection with my aunt, then. They had both been interested in the late queen of prerevolutionary France.

I spent another few minutes looking around, but without knowing what I was looking for, it was a futile endeavor. A person could spend days in here, going through paperwork, and still have nothing to show for it. It made me wonder just how thoroughly Wayne and company had searched the office after Martin Wentworth disappeared. What I was looking for could be right under my nose, and I'd never know it. So I contented myself with shuffling through the top layer of papers on the desk, to see if anything jumped out at me, and when nothing did, I started pulling out the drawers. They were better organized than the top of the desk, but not by much, and if Professor Wentworth had been doing research on either Marie Antoinette or my aunt, there was no evidence of it.

I was just about to leave when I came across an envelope in the top drawer, half buried under pencils, erasers, and rubber bands, and practically covered with cryptic notes saying things like 'Utensils—RB?' or 'Bergère—Fraser House.' When I opened the envelope, it turned out to be full of photographs. Snapshots, blurry and out of focus. For a moment I was afraid I'd come across the professor's private stash of dirty pictures, but a quick look dispelled that idea. The photos were of things, not people. A small footstool standing on a wood floor. A chaise longue in some dark corner somewhere, embroidered with ribbons and swags of flowers. A hairbrush and mirror set on what looked like a blue blanket. A set of hair combs on a tabletop. An exquisite tapestry hanging on a background of tartan plaid in shades of green, orange, and royal blue.

I brought the tapestry photo closer, eyes narrowed and nostrils quivering. It was quite possibly the ugliest wallpaper pattern I'd ever seen, and I'd had plenty of opportunity to judge. I'd spent most of Friday stripping Aunt Inga's hallway of it. But there had been no antique tapestry hanging in the hallway then.

. . .

Kate wasn't at the car when I got back to the parking lot, so I settled in to wait. It didn't take long; only a few minutes had passed when she came striding across the grass at a good clip. I stuck the stack of photographs back in my handbag. Kate might be OK with me going into Wentworth's office, but I wasn't sure she'd feel the same way about my absconding with possible evidence, so I thought it better to keep that part of it to myself. Still, I wanted to be sure I would recognize these things if I ever came across them.

'Everything all right?' I asked when she was within hailing distance.

'Fine.'

'Is your daughter OK?'

'Fine.' She wrenched open the driver's side door and slid behind the wheel. I hurriedly got into the car on the other side as she cranked the engine over and zoomed backward.

'Are you OK?'

She opened her mouth, probably to say 'Fine' again, and then thought better of it. Instead she sent me a sidelong look under her lashes. 'Sorry. She just makes me angry, you know.'

'Wouldn't talk to you?' I asked sympathetically. Kate grimaced. 'Swore up and down that nothing was wrong. She and Josh had a fight, about nothing important, and she won't tell me anything else.'

'I remember being nineteen,' I said. 'There was a ton of stuff I thought I couldn't tell my mother.'

Kate nodded. 'I thought that if I didn't say anything about the parties and the alcohol and the sex, my folks wouldn't know what was going on. Of course, all that changed when I got pregnant.' She pulled the car out of the college grounds and onto the main road again. After a moment she added brightly, in an obvious effort to change the subject, 'So, did you find anything exciting in Professor Wentworth's office?'

The photographs were burning a hole in my purse, but I shook my head. 'I'm afraid not. There was enough stuff there to occupy several people for several weeks. There was no way I could go through it all in just a couple of minutes. He had no file on my aunt; I did look for that. Although, like my aunt, he had several books about Marie Antoinette and about Maine history.'

'Sounds like maybe the professor was looking into the legend,' Kate said. I nodded. It sounded exactly like that.

. . .

After Kate dropped me at Aunt Inga's house and had helped me carry in the couple of bags of groceries I had asked her to stop for, she went back to the B and B, and I made myself an early dinner. When my empty plastic bowl and plastic fork were safely deposited in the trash can, I made double sure the back and front doors were locked before I made my way up the stairs to the second floor. My knee still hurt a little, but the brace was doing a bang-up job in keeping it supported, so I already felt a lot better. Still, the rickety, steep steps up to the attic were more of a challenge than I wanted. I made it, though, and pushed open the plain plank door after unlatching the hook and eye that kept it closed. It screeched like a soul in agony, and I jumped and then sneezed as a cloud of dust wafted up from the floor when the bottom of the door skimmed over it.

There was nothing as helpful as a light switch inside the door here; I had to shuffle into the middle of the attic and pull on the chain that hung there. The glare from the naked hundred-watt bulb cut across my retinas, and I squeezed my eyes shut until I could see again without hurting myself. Then I opened my eyes and looked around.

Aunt Inga's attic was the equivalent of Professor Wentworth's office: bigger and dustier, but just as full of junk. Boxes and barrels, furniture and clothes. A rather nice old walnut rolltop desk—far superior to the more modern monstrosity downstairs—was sitting just inside the door, and I gave it a pat on my way past. I should look through it sometime to make sure my aunt hadn't left any paperwork or anything else important in it.

That wasn't what I was looking for now, however. I had brought the snapshots from Professor Wentworth's office for reference—not that I could mistake the tapestry if I found it—and I was on a mission. The tapestry wasn't anywhere in the downstairs part of the house, or I would have found it by now. It wasn't in the basement, it wasn't in the garden shed, and the attic was the only other possible place it could be, provided it was still on the premises. Hence my trip up here to look around.

It took a while, and I found lots of other interesting things, including what I thought was a wedding veil tucked away at the bottom of a box, but no tapestry. I did find the chaise longue, though. Eventually I realized that the closet built along one wall of the attic didn't extend all the way back to the roof. It had a back wall, which left a roughly triangular space in the very back of the attic, comprised of floor, closet wall, and sloping ceiling. And that's where the chaise longue was, tucked behind the built-in closet, on the other side of the chimney, and buried under two different furniture covers and a pile of assorted Christmas junk. I had to climb over boxes and under racks of clothes to get to it. When I got there, I discovered that the innermost cover was made from a special nonacidic material, the kind museums and collections use to protect especially old and fragile fabrics. At first glance, the chaise longue wasn't prepossessing; it was reupholstered, badly, in the most god-awful example of s orange and brown tweed I had ever seen, which clashed horribly with the curvy, elegant lines of the carved legs and headrest.

I picked at the edge of the seat and undid a few uneven stitches, peeling the tweed aside to expose a corner of the original fabric. And then I sat back on my heels and stared, my eyes wide.

I'll be the first to admit that antique furniture isn't my forte. Working with Philippe had taught me the basics, though. Plus, there was fabric involved here, and I do know fabric.

This fabric, with its needlepoint embroidery of stylized flower arrangements, swags, and ribbons, dated from the second half of the eighteenth century, as did the burlaplike underside: –, in other words. Right around the time Samuel Clough and
Sally
were ferrying their load of Marie Antoinette's favorite things across the Atlantic.

12

––'
Ma petite chou!
' Philippe exclaimed five minutes later, when I had made it downstairs to the main floor and had dialed his number. 'How are you
, ma chérie
?'

'I'm fine,' I said shortly, wrinkling my brows. He sounded much too happy to hear from me, although that wasn't what had given me pause. Something he had said sounded wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. 'Do you call Tara your little cabbage, too?'

He must have thought I was jealous, because Philippe chuckled warmly. It trickled over my skin like a gentle mist, but it didn't go any further. No telltale tightening in my chest or my stomach this time around.

'Mais non, chérie. Naturellement!'
He sounded shocked, although I wasn't entirely sure whether it was the idea that he'd call her by
my
pet name, or the idea that he'd call the coltish Tara a cabbage in the first place, that was surprising to him. He lowered his voice to an even more throbbing register. 'I miss you,
ma petite.
'

'I miss you, too,' I answered automatically. In truth, what I missed wasn't Philippe himself, it was just someone I could talk to, and laugh with, and turn to when I was happy or sad or scared or worried.

'When are you coming back,
chérie
?'

'I'm not sure,' I said. The way things stood, the likelihood of my going back to Philippe was slim to none, unless he fired Tara and came groveling on his hands and knees, and even then I didn't think I wanted him back. Still, I didn't feel up for an argument, especially when I had a favor to ask. 'There's a lot to do up here. And I may go out to California to visit Mom and Noel before I come back to New York. It's been a while since I've been there.'

'But
chérie
—' Philippe said, and I knew that he was pouting like a disappointed five-year-old. Things must not be working out with Tara.

I interrupted. 'I was actually calling to ask your help. Since you're such an expert on both antique furniture and French history.'

'Oui?'
It's always possible to shake Philippe out of a case of the sulks by appealing to his ego.

'Remember when you said that maybe I'd find a valuable treasure in my aunt's house?'

'Oui?'
He was beginning to sound decidedly cheerful.

'Well, I don't know how valuable it is, but I came across this old fainting couch up in the attic. You know, a chaise longue.' I gave it the French pronunciation. 'It's made in France, I can tell that much, and in the late eighteenth century . . .'

'Tell me about it,' Philippe commanded, his accent almost missing in his excitement. I did my best to describe the piece of furniture I had found, and when I wasn't doing it to Philippe's satisfaction, he asked me increasingly detailed questions, including one about what I thought might be a maker's mark burned into the underside of the couch. After several minutes of interrogation, he seemed satisfied.

'So?' I demanded when he fell silent. 'What do you think?'

'Where would your aunt get such a thing?' Philippe asked.

'I guess I forgot to mention that part.' I told him— briefly—about Samuel Clough and
Sally
and the French cargo. 'Local legend has it that it was Marie Antoinette's stuff, things she was going to use to start over in the New World.'

'
Trés interessant
,' Philippe said.

'I don't know what the connection is between Captain Clough and my aunt, but maybe the families were related a hundred years ago, or something.'

'With a provenance,' Philippe said, pronouncing it in the French manner, 'the chaise longue would be more valuable,
naturellement
.'

'Naturally,' I agreed, grimacing at my own face in the mirror. Before—by which I mean while we were dating—I had always found his sprinkling of Gallicisms quaint and sexy, but tonight I must admit they struck me as calculated and irritating. After living in New York for ten years, he should be able to speak proper English.

'Without, it might still be worth many thousand dollars. But if the provenance could be proven, and especially if it could be traced back to Antoinette . . .'

'Right,' I said briskly. 'I should see if I can find a provenance. Maybe I can find out how the couch came to be in my aunt's possession. Thanks for your help, Philippe.'

'But
chérie
—' Philippe said. And that was the last thing I heard, because I hung up the phone. And just so I wouldn't be tempted to answer when he called back—which I was pretty sure he would, persistence being one of Philippe's more prominent traits—I immediately dialed California.

'Hello, dear,' Mother said. 'How are you?'

I thought it safer not to mention my accident and told her I was fine. 'I wanted to ask you a question.'

'Of course. Do you have another call?'

'I don't think so,' I said.

'Are you sure? I could have sworn I heard something . . . ?'

'I'll call them back. Listen, Mom, I wanted to ask you something. When you were growing up, did you ever hear the story about Captain Clough and
Sally
and a whole bunch of furniture and other things that came over to Maine from Paris during the French Revolution?'

'Of course,' Mother said. 'It's a Maine legend. Are you sure you don't want to get that? They sound persistent.'

'I know who it is, and no, I don't want to get it. It's no one important.' Hearing me say that Philippe was unimportant would probably make Mother happy, since she'd never liked him, but I didn't want to derail the conversation.

'If you're sure.' She didn't sound entirely sure herself, but she stopped asking, and eventually, the insistent beeping on the line stopped, too. 'Where were we? Oh, yes. There are items all over coastal Maine that the owners claim came over from France on the
Sally.
Captain Clough had a house on Edgecomb Island, so a lot of things ended up there, but I know that Colonel Swan and his wife owned something they called the Marie Antoinette bed. And one of their children married a Knox, so there's a sideboard or buffet at Montpelier in Thomaston, as well. There's even a chair or something at the Fraser House in Waterfield, I think.'

'How about the Mortons?' I inquired. 'Any connection there?'

'To the Cloughs or the Swans? None I've ever heard of. Why do you ask?'

'I found this fainting couch,' I said, and I went on to explain what it looked like and what Philippe had said about it. Mother sniffed eloquently when she heard his name, but she refrained from comment.

'If we're related to the Cloughs or the Swans,' she said when I'd finished, 'I've surely never heard about it. Of course, that doesn't mean it's impossible. I don't know as much as I'd like about the Mortons, and if it was a distant connection two hundred years ago, there's no reason why I would have known. One would have thought the possession of a piece of Marie Antoinette's furniture would be a topic of conversation in the family, though.'

One would think. 'So maybe it isn't Marie Antoinette's couch at all. Maybe it's just a generic French fainting couch that never belonged to anyone important. Maybe it's a reproduction. It looked eighteenth century to me, but I'm not an expert on furniture, and although Philippe confirmed that it sounded eighteenth century, he hasn't seen it.' And wouldn't, because I didn't want to see him.

'A pity you can't ask Aunt Inga,' Mother remarked.

'She knew everything that ever happened in Waterfield.'

I nodded. 'I know, the doctor told me.' And then I bit my tongue, but it was too late.

'Doctor?' Mother repeated. 'What's wrong? You aren't ill, are you, Avery?'

'Not at all,' I said. 'I fell down the stairs on Friday. It was no big deal. I hurt my knee, but I've had it taken care of. Dr. Ellis looked at it and told me to take it easy for a week, and that I should be completely fine by then.'

'I remember Dr. Ellis,' Mother said. 'I saw him once or twice when I was a girl. He's still practicing?'

'This is his son, I think. His name is Ben, and he's around sixty. He told me his family has been doctors for generations.'

'Of course,' Mother said. 'I remember Ben Ellis. He's a few years older than me, so I didn't know him well, but I remember him. Didn't he have a son, as well?'

'Derek,' I answered. 'He's been helping me with Aunt Inga's house.'

'That's nice of him,' Mother opined.

'I hired him. It's what he does for a living.'

Mother dismissed Derek as soon as she found out that he wasn't a doctor like his father, and that he wasn't helping me out of the goodness of his heart.

'What a shame,' she said, sounding just a little disappointed.

'I doubt he'd agree,' I answered. 'He studied medicine but decided not to go into practice. And just in case you're getting ideas, I'm not looking for a new boyfriend quite yet. Especially not in Waterfield. I'll only be here until the end of the summer, so it doesn't make sense to get involved with anyone.'

'Of course not,' Mother agreed. 'Although love doesn't always make sense, does it, Avery?' I knew she was thinking of her own late-in-life love affair with Noel and following him across the country to California. 'You wait, when you least expect it, the right man will come along.'

'I'm sure he will,' I answered. 'And in the meantime, I'm staying busy with Aunt Inga's house. I'll stop by the historical society tomorrow to have a look at the chair, and if I discover anything interesting about the Mortons, I'll let you know.'

'You do that, dear,' Mother said. She wished me good luck and hung up. I went to bed.

. . .

'Sure,' Derek said the next morning, after I had asked him if he knew where the local historical society was located. I waited, but when he didn't continue, I added, 'Would you tell me where it is?'

'You going there?'

'That's the plan.'

'Now?'

I rolled my eyes. 'Of course not now. It's barely seven o'clock in the morning. Officer Thomas is supposed to come by to fingerprint the electrical panel downstairs, so I have to be here to let him in. And I'm not exactly dressed to go out, in case you hadn't noticed.'

He contemplated me. I'd still been in bed when he let himself in, and I had come down to greet him in what passes for my 'pajamas,' a pair of shorts and a rumpled T-shirt. My hair was once again arranged à la crow's nest, and I wasn't wearing makeup or even a bra underneath the shirt. The corners of his mouth tilted up. 'I'd noticed.'

I flushed and folded my arms across my chest. 'There's no need to be rude.'

The grin widened. 'I wasn't being rude.'

'For your information,' I said, 'when I had to go to work every day, I always managed to look appealing.' Of course, back then I had been dressing to impress Philippe, but that was none of Derek's business.

'Oh, I'm not saying you don't look appealing, Tinkerbell.' I felt slightly mollified by that until he added, 'You look like you just rolled out of bed. What could be unappealing about that?'

He winked and brushed past me, and I turned to look after him as he sauntered—there's no other word for it—down the hallway. He was wearing a royal blue T-shirt today, and his usual faded jeans, and of course that heavy tool belt that rode low on his hips. I considered following him into the kitchen but changed my mind when he turned and threw me a knowing grin over his shoulder. Instead, I closed my mouth with a snap and scurried up the stairs as fast as I could.

It was tempting to pull out all the stops, to really show him what I could do when I tried, but I managed to resist the temptation. Instead, I pulled on a clean pair of jeans (which just happened to fit perfectly), and a baby-doll top in turquoise silk, hand-dyed by
moi
, which made the most of what little figure I have. I turned my head upside down and brushed my hair until it crackled, and then I spent several minutes in front of the bathroom mirror painting my face, covering the sprinkling of freckles across my nose and giving myself that natural glow that made me look like I was radiant all on my own, without the benefit of makeup at all. When I came downstairs again, Derek had hoisted a bag of grout and a plastic bag from the local hardware store up on the kitchen table and was busy sorting through several small plastic-wrapped packages of something.

'What's in the bags?' I asked.

'A couple of extra dead bolts and security chains for the doors, and new locks for all the windows. If someone's out to get you, I don't aim to make it easy for them. I also picked up a tube of tile adhesive and a ten-pound bag of grout. I figured you could get started on your kitchen counter.' He glanced over at me. 'It's something you can do without moving around too much, and it'll keep you from going crazy with boredom.'

'I thought you didn't want me to mosaic the kitchen counter,' I said. Although I had suspected a softening in his attitude on Saturday, when he'd given me the magazine with the instructions.

He shrugged. 'It's your counter. You can do what you want with it. Maybe it won't look so bad.'

'What a ringing endorsement,' I said.

He smiled. 'I'll get you set up, and then I'll go to work on the doors.' He turned toward the counter and began showing me the proper way to arrange the pottery shards. I only half listened, preoccupied with the movements of his hands. They were slender, with long fingers and blunt nails, one of which was jagged, and another which was blue, from where he had hit it with a hammer the other day. I'd heard the curse and gone to the cellar door to ask if he was all right, but his answer had been curt enough that I hadn't asked for details.