Gilt by Association (2 page)

I
composed myself for the interrogation. To be honest, I was disappointed. I suppose I had imagined a windowless room lit only by a harsh spotlight trained directly at my eyes. Behind the spotlight I would hear, but not see, a chain-smoking detective, who was undoubtedly wearing a rumpled, sweat-stained suit, and who had a voice like James Cagney.

I didn't expect to be handed a cup of well-brewed coffee, with cream and sugar. The room I was in had no windows, but the recessed fluorescent lighting was sufficiently bright for me to read the fine print on the sugar packet. The chair I was offered was contemporary and boxy, but the natural cotton upholstery looked comfortable, as well as clean. Ditto for my interrogator. It was Greg Washburn.

“Name please?”

“Abigail Louise Timberlake. But you already know that.”

The Wedgwood-blue eyes blinked. “Please, Abby. This is an official interview. I have to ask these questions for the record.”

“Ask away,” I said. When he was through, I had a few questions of my own.

“Marital status?”

“Divorced. Three years. From Buford Timberlake. We were married twenty-three years.”

Greg smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “You like to anticipate my questions, don't you?”

“I like to be prepared,” I said. “Thinking ahead means fewer surprises. And I'm forty-seven.”

“Eight,” he said. “Your birthday was last week.”

I gave him a pointed look. “So it was.”

“Place of employment?”

“The Den of Antiquity, 3629 Selwyn Avenue. I'm the proprietor.”

“Want to guess what I'm going to ask next?”

“What a body was doing in my armoire?”

“Bingo.”

I shook my head. “Beats me. I never saw it before in my life.”

“The armoire?”

“No, the body. Or should I call it a corpse? The armoire I've seen. French, you know. Parisian. Circa 1775. The finish is in very good condition.”

“How long have you had it?”

The question momentarily threw me. “Had it? Oh, you mean the armoire! I haven't! I mean, it had just arrived. It and three other pieces that I bought at auction yesterday.”

Greg ran a large hand through a head of thick, almost black hair. His own hair. “Tell me about the auction.”

I tore my eyes away from him and stared into my coffee cup. It was remarkably reflective and made me wish I'd backbrushed my short brown hair that day, instead of merely combing it off my face.

“The auction was at the Purvis Auction Barn down in Pineville. It started yesterday afternoon at two. The usual crowd was there.”

“Usual?”

“I mean the auction was open to the public, but it
wasn't advertised, so mostly just dealers showed up. Keeps the riffraff out.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. Unlike most men I'd been dating lately, Detective Washburn had two of those.

I took a deep breath. My choice of words had been unfortunate. “What I mean is, having the general public there can complicate things.”

The other eyebrow shot up.

“Well, we don't like them to see what we pay for the goods,” I admitted sheepishly. “They wouldn't understand our markup system.” But there was more to it than that.

While I am happy to take my customers' money, most days I can do without their attitude. You'd be surprised at some of the things I've seen and heard during the eight years I've been in this business. Everybody wants to buy steak at hamburger prices, and just because most antique shops in the area do allow a certain amount of “bargaining,” that doesn't mean we are willing to give our merchandise away.

I have had customers scratch their initials in pieces of furniture and then claim that the pieces used to belong to them and were stolen. Sometimes they run car keys along the inside of a chair leg and then ask me to discount it. One lady used a nail file to mar the glaze on a Limoges platter and then had the nerve to demand I sell it to her at half-price. Yes, I know, these folks are the exception, but even many of my best customers expect me to sell them an item at cost. Where, I wonder, do they think my mortgage money is coming from, and what do they expect me to eat? Just because I received a one-time inheritance from my Aunt Eulonia, I'm not immune to the cost of living.

We dealers must make a profit to survive, just like anyone else. If we're very lucky we are occasionally offered first crack at someone's estate
before
they die. Folks mov
ing into nursing homes or retirement centers obviously can't take it all with them. Sometimes after a death, relatives will invite me over to the deceased's house and ask me to make an offer. But I don't have the connections Purnell Purvis does, and most Monday afternoons will find me down at Purvis Auction Barn, bidding on pieces that I think will sell well in my shop.

I must confess that until recently the Den of Antiquity has housed an eclectic collection of middle-of-the-road items that date from the early eighteen hundreds through the Great Depression. The fine pieces from the Barras estate would have been out of my reach, had it not been for the windfall of Aunt Eulonia's estate. But I must emphasize that I cannot afford to
keep
such expensive items in stock. I must turn them around, and soon, if I expect to remain in business.

At any rate, the antique community in the greater Charlotte area is a close knit one. We are like family. Sometimes we love one another, sometimes we hate one another. Monday afternoons at Purvis Auction Barn is our family reunion, and we don't cotton much to outsiders. Old Purvis only lets them into the barn because they have money. But as I said, he doesn't advertise, so thankfully the outsiders are few and far between.

“It's basically an auction among friends,” I added.

The eyebrows came down. “You said before that yesterday was
mostly
just dealers. Were there other folks there as well?”

I shrugged. “There might have been. Every now and then one of the public wanders in, and if they look like they can rub two nickels together, Purvis lets them stay. But we're a big group, and things can get really hopping. So I can't say for sure if there were any drop-ins yesterday.”

Before he could ask me anything else, a uniformed officer walked into the room without knocking and whis
pered in Greg's ear. I never knew men were capable of conversing so softly. When the interloper left, Greg settled back in his chair like a cat about to nap. He may have been relaxed, but my heart was pounding.

“You ever see the deceased before?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. I never saw the body until I opened the armoire door.”

The Wedgwood eyes regarded me calmly. “He has a name, you know.”

I nodded. Let him try to trick me into saying a name I'd never heard. He would have to wait forever.

Greg suddenly leaned forward. “It's Arnold Ramsey.” He sat back again.

The name meant nothing. However, hearing the name had a strange effect on me. Until that moment, because of shock, the body in the armoire had been just that—a body. A corpse. My concern had been my business and visitation rights to my son. The body was just a thing. A hunk of meat. It may as well have been a cow. But a name changed everything. Suddenly that was a man, a person in my newly purchased armoire. And he was dead!

I began to cry.

“There, there,” Greg said, in that helpless tone men use when they encounter tears. He gallantly handed me a handkerchief.

I graciously accepted it. But to my disgust, the handkerchief, which was clearly a man's handkerchief, smelled like a woman. A woman who wore cheap perfume.

“The redhead?” I asked, immediately handing the cloth back.

He crossed his arms. “It was your idea that we cool it for a while, Abby. It was you who suggested we date other people.”

I crossed my legs. “I only wanted to catch my breath, Greg. Things were moving faster than I expected. I didn't want to end up married again before I knew what hit me.”

He was kind enough not to laugh, but not kind enough to suppress a huge grin. “Who said anything about marriage? I thought things were fine as they were. We were both having a great time, weren't we?”

“Were we?”

“The sex was super,” he said, the grin bigger than ever.

I stood up. I am on the short side—four foot nine without heels. Unfortunately, because I had planned on unpacking my new purchases, I was wearing a pair of old flats. A good pair of spikes can push me up to five feet and do wonders for my self-esteem, not to mention the respect I get.

“We never
had
sex, buster. You must have me confused with Silicone Sally.”

“Her name is Deena,” he said. “And we're just friends. I was only kidding about the sex.”

I forced a big grin of my own. “No, you were right the first time. We did have sex. Only it was so mediocre I must have blocked it out.”

He glanced around nervously. No doubt our conversation was being monitored, if not taped. It had been stupid and unprofessional of him to forget that.

“Very funny,” he said softly.

“Yes, sex with you was often very funny,” I said loudly. “Remember the time we traded clothes—”

“Abby!”

I relented and backed off, for old time's sake, if for nothing else. Greg had always been a gentleman, and I mean that as a compliment. And even though I was furious at him for dating Deena, there was no point in burning bridges. A little grovelling and a dozen yellow roses can go a long way with this gal.

“Well, back to my business,” I said briskly.

He pointed soberly at the chair, and I sat back down.

“Yes?”

“Did you know those two guys who delivered your armoire?”

“Jimbo and Skeet?”

He shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Well, I don't know their last names, if that's what you want. I just know that they called each other Jimbo and Skeet. So yes, I have seen them before, but I don't really know them. I just know that they've worked for old Purvis for years.”

He glanced down at a tablet in his lap. “And what can you tell me about Purnell Purvis?”

I sighed. “The old coot's a tyrant,” I said charitably. “He can turn honey into vinegar just by looking at it. Still, Purvis would never do anything like that. Force someone into an armoire and then kill them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. He might be as mean as a knotted-up snake, but he has principles. Ask anyone.”

“No, what I meant was, how do you know that Mr. Ramsey was forced into the armoire and
then
killed? How do you know it wasn't the other way around?”

“Well, that should be fairly obvious to anyone who has seen the armoire.”

“Yes, but pretend for a moment that I haven't seen the armoire. If I looked at it through your eyes, what would I see?”

“Well, I mean, right there on the back wall of the armoire there is a message written in blood. A dead man can't write, can he?”

I had never seen Greg more attentive. If only finding dead bodies wasn't so stressful, it could sure put the life back into a relationship.

“A message? What did it say?”

“You mean
you
didn't see it?”

“Ah, of course I did. But I'm interested in your interpretation.”

I knew he was bluffing, and it's frightening when you see things that a trained police investigator misses. Maybe all that training to look for hairs and dust molecules out of place has left them blind to the handwriting on the wall.

“Of course, it wasn't a whole message,” I said. “Just the letter ‘B,' but you can bet it stood for something important. I know I wouldn't waste my time or blood writing meaningless graffiti if I were dying. Say, you wouldn't happen to know a surefire way to remove bloodstains, would you?”

“I'll ask the lab,” he said. He was scribbling furiously on his pad.

I waited patiently, content for the moment just to watch him. Greg Washburn is easy on the eyes. No, make that the most handsome man I have ever met. I know that beauty—especially physical beauty—is subjective, but if Greg Washburn were on TV or in the movies, millions of women would fall in love with him. Yet he had picked me to date, when there had to be thousands of other Charlotteans who would jump at the chance. Perhaps I had been precipitous in reining in our relationship. Even if I lost my head entirely, there had to be worse things than waking up some morning and finding out that I was Mrs. Greg Washburn.

“Greg?”

He looked up, the Wedgwood-blue eyes half-shaded by long black lashes. “Yes?”

“I was thinking. I mean, maybe we could start over. If you know what I mean.”

“You know this Arnold Ramsey after all?”

“What?”

“How well did you know him, Abby?” he asked. He wasn't kidding.

I stood up again. “Look, I told you I didn't know him. So, if you'll excuse me—” I took a small step toward the door, waiting for him to stop me.

“I'm going to have to impound the armoire,” he said quietly.

I stopped. I tossed my head. Unfortunately head tossing is a gesture that is far more effective when one has long hair.

“Impound it then. Now can I go?”

He had stopped scribbling and was obviously doodling. “And I'm afraid that includes the other three pieces you bought as well.”

I stared, first at the tablet, then at him. It was a remarkably good sketch of me. The man must have had art lessons somewhere along the line.

“Do what you have to do,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.

“That's what I'm leading up to. Abby, I'm not doing this to be mean, honest, it's just procedure.”

My children accuse me of having a warning bell in my head. Perhaps they are right, because my head was certainly buzzing.

“There's more, isn't there?”