First Gravedigger (2 page)

“Do I have it? I thought that went on to the file room.”

“Didn't you keep a copy of your evaluation?”

“Hold on, let me look.” I did a quick search through my files. “No, I don't have anything on it.”

June came close to making a tut-tut sound. “All right, I'll have a duplicate made.”

“Thanks, June. Why does he want to see me about the Meissen? Porcelain's not my bailiwick—I was just standing in for Wightman one day when he was sick.”

“I don't know, Earl. You'll have to ask him.”

“I'll do that,” I said grimly. “Be there anon.”

I was looking through my files one more time when a voice speaking my name made me jump. It was Peg McAllister, who'd just stuck her head through the door. “Earl, what's wrong? You're all on edge.”

“Now what could possibly be wrong?” I said sarcastically. “With all this love all around me?”

Peg stage-sighed. “I do try to be helpful and supportive to my fellow slaves, really I do. But sometimes one of them whose initials are Earl Sommers makes it ver-y dif-fi-cult.”

“Sorry, Peg. It's just that kind of day.”

“Whenever I have one of those, I admit defeat early and go straight back to bed. What was Wightman needling you about?”

“Nothing in particular—just needling for the fun of it. You know how he is.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Got to rush, love,” I said. “Speer awaits.”

“Then go,” she nodded. “His bite is worse than his bark.”

I mustered a grin and headed toward Speer's office. If anybody knew about Speer's bite, it would be Peg McAllister. She'd been with the old man longer than any of the rest of us, from the early days when Speer Galleries was a one-room affair showing a few select pieces of Federal period furniture. Speer had set up shop in Philadelphia, where so much of our good furniture originally came from. But so many had been there before him he'd had to deal in pewter and glassware and portraits and the like just to make a go of it. Then one year he paid a bundle for a set of Revere tableware he later learned had been stolen.

So he'd hired Peg McAllister, fresh out of law school and totally ignorant of antiques. But she'd learned. She handled all of Speer's legal affairs, but her main responsibility over the years had been to track down the legal title to whatever her boss was thinking of buying. Speer had never been stung again.

Speer Galleries gradually earned a small, respectable reputation, but Amos Speer wasn't getting rich. There were too many other small, respectable dealers in Philadelphia. So he started looking longingly toward western Pennsylvania. Why should all that nice Scaife and Mellon money go to out-of-town dealers? Wouldn't an on-the-spot agent be of some value? So Speer and Peg and the one agent Speer had working for him at the time (long since departed) had packed up and moved to Pittsburgh.

It had been a smart move: Speer virtually had the market to himself. The antique dealers in the area at the time had been the smallest of small time; what few good pieces they'd carried Speer had picked up his first week in town. And the money came in. Amos Speer was an international dealer now, but it was Pittsburgh money that had put him over the top.

Agents had come and gone, but Peg McAllister went on forever. She had
become
Speer Galleries, as much the institution as the founder himself. Peg had been known to tell Amos Speer off in no uncertain terms whenever she thought he was taking a wrong turn. She was the only one at the gallery who could get away with it.

God knows I couldn't. Especially not now, when I was so far behind in my work. The reason I was so far behind was quite simple: my work load had more than doubled within the past month. No explanation offered. Cataloguing the Alice Ballard estate should have been a full-time job, and there should have been at least three of us on it. But I was responsible for the whole thing, and every day some new smaller job came in that would steal time from the Ballard evaluation. I'd tried putting the smaller jobs off until the big one was finished, but every day Speer or his secretary would call and want to know what about the spool table, anything on the Peter Cooper rocker, where's your report on the Duncan Phyfe, how many spindles on that new Windsor chair. It wasn't that we were all overworked; we weren't. None of the other agents seemed to be straining unduly. Just me. I didn't like what I was thinking.

June Murray looked up from her desk when I walked into Speer's outer office. She gave me a mouth-only smile and held out a sheet of paper, a photocopy of my evaluation of the Meissen figurine I'd examined about a week ago.

“June, you're a lifesaver. I owe you one.” I gave her a winning smile with no noticeable effect. June was one of those just-average-looking women who through unstinting effort make themselves attractive. She had to look good, being in frequent contact with purchasers of beauty as she was. So she was always perfectly groomed. Always. I was willing to bet she put on make-up to take out the garbage. No, on second thought, there wouldn't be any garbage in June Murray's life. I started toward Speer's door.

“Ah …”

I stopped and looked back at her.

“Better not, Earl.” The tone was friendly. I took my hand off the doorknob and waited while she buzzed the inner sanctum. “Mr. Sommers is here.”

I worked at keeping my face impassive.

“He says he'll be with you in a moment,” June told me. “Have a seat.” I sat down and she turned back to her work.

From where I was sitting I had a three-quarter view of her face, and I wasn't surprised at the little smile that kept playing about her lips. By warning me, she'd kept me from putting my foot in it. I was supposed to remember that, add it to my account of favors owed. But the very act of warning me had reinforced her own authority, had made me acknowledge how much more in the know she was than I. She had controlled my movement. Some folks are quite ingenious at finding ways of putting other folks down.

While others like the old ways of doing it: Speer kept me waiting twenty-five minutes. I didn't even have the door closed behind me when he snapped, “Did you bring the Meissen evaluation?”

“Right here.” I handed him the photocopy and took the chair facing him. The Meissen figurine was on his desk, a deliciously dainty Leda perched on the back of her oversexed swan.

He waited until I was settled and then said, “Sit down.”

The bastard. I'd been coming in here and sitting down without an invitation for seven years, and now all of a sudden he decides my manners need correcting? It was a junior executive's trick, designed to embarrass the other fellow and put him at a disadvantage. Speer deliberately allowed an awkward silence to grow between us. I looked at that carefully barbered face and that sculptured white hair and those manicured hands and that impeccably tailored suit and wondered what it would take to make that dirty old man fall on his face.

Speer pointed a long finger at the Leda. “It is your considered opinion that this is old Meissen?” His voice had a sarcastic edge to it.

“You're saying it's not?”

“I'm saying look again.”

I picked up the Leda; it felt heavy enough to be old Meissen. Old Meissen was eighteenth-century porcelain that weighed considerably more than the nineteenth-century reproductions of the same pieces (“new” Meissen). I turned the figurine over and looked at the mark: crossed swords, so that was all right. If it had said “Meissen,” ironically, there'd have been no doubt that this was the inferior stuff; “Meissen” was the mark used by a nineteenth-century factory that just happened to be located in the same German town that had produced the earlier, more valuable porcelain.

The figurine had the right greenish tint to it, ever so slight; the later porcelains were generally dead white. Old Meissen was carefully decorated, and this piece certainly was. Ornamental lace border on Leda's gown, a few scattered flowers in her hair. The feathering carefully detailed on the swan's powerful outstretched wings. The colors were okay—no maroons or yellow greens, which were nineteenth-century introductions. So far everything checked out.

Then I saw. Leda's eyes—they were blue. All the eighteenth-century Meissen figures had brown eyes.

“New Meissen,” I admitted, and put the figurine back on Speer's desk.

Speer pushed the photocopy of my evaluation toward me. “Do you see one word about eye color in there?”

He hadn't even looked at the paper; that meant he already had a copy. Telling me to bring in my evaluation—that was a ploy to put me on the defensive. I read through what I'd written and said, defensively, “You know these reports can't mention everything about a piece. Mostly they're concerned with matters that might be considered suspect.”

“And blue eyes aren't suspect?” Speer snorted. “Good god, Sommers, even the rawest neophyte knows to look for brown eyes in old Meissen.”

I narrowed my own brown eyes and studied him. He was absolutely right: eye color was one of the first things you look for. It was such an obvious giveaway. So obvious, in fact, that even a furniture man knew to look for it. If I hadn't mentioned eye color in my evaluation, it was because there'd been nothing unusual to mention. Which could mean only one thing: Speer had switched pieces on me.

He said nothing, watching me figure it out. Daring me to accuse him, to provide him with an excuse to—to do what?
Careful
.

I decided. “I'm sorry, Mr. Speer, I don't see how I could have overlooked that. Porcelains aren't really my field—if you'll remember, I was just helping out one day when Wightman was sick.”

“No excuse, Sommers. I expect catholicity in my agents.”

“Well, then, I probably rushed the evaluation. I've had an unusually high number of them this past month. Not to mention cataloguing the Alice Ballard estate.”

Speer's eyes were gleaming. “Are you saying you're overworked?”

Enough was enough. “Yes, I am. The Ballard estate should take precedence over all these other evaluations, but I've had one distraction after another to keep me from finishing the job.”

“How far are you from finishing?”

“End of the week. It'd be finished now if I could have given it my full attention.”

“This week.” He seemed to think it over. “Sommers, if you can't finish it this week, I'll put someone else on it.”

I nodded. “I could use some help.”

“You don't understand. I'll put someone else in charge.”

No fun in tightening the screws if the guy you're screwing doesn't know about it. I got the message, all right. I nodded curtly to Speer and got up to leave.

He pulled Wightman's trick of letting me get all the way to the door before throwing his last bombshell. “By the way, Sommers, something a little more in your line has come in. A Mrs. Percy has what she calls an ‘early American' writing table she wants to sell. She says it's two hundred years old. Run out and take a look at it, will you? June will give you the address. I'd like an evaluation by five this afternoon.”

Look at this writing table. Finish that catalogue. Jump through this hoop. As I sleepwalked out I could hear Speer telling June to get Wightman on the phone.

June handed me an address card without looking up from the phone. Mrs. Percy of the ‘early American' writing table lived in Beaver Falls. An hour to drive there, another hour to find the house and make the evaluation, an hour to drive back, allow for traffic, then write up the evaluation. Half a day shot.

Outside I crumpled the photocopy of my Meissen evaluation into a ball and looked for a place to throw it. Not a wastebasket in sight, of course. I stuck the wadded paper in my pocket.

Back in my office I lit a cigarette and tried to think. The scenario had changed. At one time I'd been the fair-haired boy at Speer Galleries, in line for the role of heir apparent. Speer was in his seventies; he was going to have to step down before too much longer. Three years ago I'd arranged for Speer to find out “accidentally” that Christie's had offered me a good position in their New York office; he'd immediately countered with a substantial raise. Speer hadn't wanted me to go then, and I had no intention of leaving. I wanted to run Speer Galleries myself; I wanted it so badly the wanting made me vulnerable.

But now it was clear that what I wanted wasn't what Speer wanted. Speer wanted me out. And he was going about getting me out in a particularly nasty way—giving me more work than I could possibly handle, rigging the evidence. That little stunt with the Meissen Leda—Speer was inviting a showdown. But I wasn't accepting any invitations today. I decided I needed an ally.

I went into Peg McAllister's office and told her what had happened.

She was stunned. “You mean he deliberately substituted a piece of new Meissen? Earl, are you sure? Couldn't you be mistaken?”

I just looked at her.

She answered her own question. “No, of course you wouldn't mistake a thing like that. And Speer would never get two pieces mixed up. It had to be deliberate.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And why did I have to make that evaluation in the first place? It wasn't urgent—it could have waited until Wightman got back.”

“You mean Speer set you up?”

“I mean Speer's
been
setting me up for over a month now. All those extra evaluations I've had dumped on me? I could have finished the Alice Ballard cataloguing by now if it hadn't been for them. So Speer just now told me that if I didn't finish the Ballard job this week he'd give it to someone else—and then he hands me a new job that'll take most of the rest of today. He's setting me up, all right.”

Peg was nodding, disturbed. “Yes, he's quite capable of doing a thing like that. But he wouldn't do it without a reason. Why, Earl? What's he got against you?”