The Ming and I
A Den of Antiquity Mystery
For Carrie Feron,
Executive Editor at Avon Books
It took a lot to get my attention that day.
“Damn good job,” Bob Steuben boomed. He is a transplanted…
“What do you mean Greg couldn’t come?” Mama demanded, wiping…
Greg didn’t follow me. He took a different route altogether,…
Mama picked up on the first ring. “My nose was…
It had been a long, hard day. I had managed…
I woke up flat on my back, with Dmitri on…
I bought a new phone for the shop and three…
Wynnell hadn’t the foggiest idea how to curtsy, but she…
“Mama! That’s ridiculous. You can’t date your maid, even if…
It was the Roach, the third board member, which put…
It takes a great deal of panache to appear calm…
“And then what happened?”
“It’s definitely the same vase,” Rob Goldburg declared ex cathedra.
Captain Keffert was a no-show. The least he could have…
It was still quite light out, and the red clay…
“It’s real, all right,” Mama said, picking it up. “It’s…
I stepped outside and nearly ran into Greg. He was…
I called Rock Hill information and was given Gloria Roach’s…
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You and June…
Calling on Shirley Hall was not just a whim. I’d…
I fed Dmitri and I fed the fungus. It was…
I did not go out into that dark night alone.
There is nothing heroic about struggling to save one’s own…
I politely turned off the radio as soon as the…
It took every one of my feminine wiles to persuade…
“So you see,” I said to Wynnell a week and…
I
t took a lot to get my attention that day. The first time June Troyan came into my shop, I barely noticed her. Her subsequent visit was a little more dramatic. I noticed her the second she came hurtling through the plate glass window. My customers noticed her as well. Prior to that rather dramatic and fatal second entrance, June was just one of many nondescript shoppers on the busiest Tuesday on record.
The night before, Channel 9 had done a special on the thriving antique business in Charlotte, and in a rare stroke of luck, my shop was singled out. It didn’t hurt that it was azalea season, and the weather was as perfect as it gets this side of heaven. People came out in droves. Then to add to my unbelievably good fortune, a sudden but brief downpour came out of nowhere, trapping everyone inside. The gods were finally smiling on me.
My name is Abigail Timberlake, and I am the overworked owner and sole employee of the Den of Antiquity. I’m not complaining, mind you. I didn’t mind having to wait on five people at once. It’s just that I couldn’t give every customer my full attention, especially those who have obviously come into my shop just to sell something. A mere glance at June and the ugly gray vase she was holding was all I
needed to know that she was a seller, not a buyer.
I do my buying at auctions and private estate sales. I never, ever, buy anything “off the street.” By sticking to this little rule I have so far managed to avoid buying stolen and fenced goods, and wasting my time with the myriad of wishful souls who expect to make a fortune off their grandmother’s trinkets—never mind that the old lady herself was as poor as a church mouse on welfare.
Of course I miss out on some exceptional buys. My friend and fellow shop owner, Wynnell Crawford, once bought an exquisite set of nineteenth-century Meissen figures in mint condition from a little old lady wearing only a babushka and a bathrobe. I would have taken one look at the vendor and concluded that her wares originally came from Kmart, having possibly made several detours through area garage sales.
“What did you notice about the victim when she came in the first time?” Investigator Greg Washburn asked when he arrived on the scene.
Greg, incidentally, is my boyfriend. He is tall, dark, and handsome, with gleaming white teeth and eyes that are Wedgwood blue. Greg is just an ego away from being a cliché. Fortunately he has no idea just how handsome he is. I, on the other hand, am four foot nine, with no outstanding colors. Enough said.
“I didn’t notice anything,” I wailed.
“Nothing?”
I glanced down at the spot where the very battered and bloody body had come to a rest. Thankfully the body had been removed and a police blanket covered most of the gore. Still, it made me uneasy to speak of the dead so near her place of demise.
“She was mousy,” I said.
“Mousy?”
“Well, brownish then. Brown hair, brown clothes. That’s all I remember.”
“Her shoes and purse were Gucci.” The speaker was a tall, leggy blond woman, a customer and fellow eyewitness detained for questioning.
Greg turned to her. “Anything else?”
“Her dress was definitely not off the rack. Christian Dior, maybe.”
“Some mouse,” Greg said, and gave me a pitying look.
“Oh, her watch was a Rolex, and her earrings were from Tiffany,” the blonde said triumphantly.
Greg rewarded her with one of his blinding smiles.
“She was wearing Shalimar,” another woman customer said, vying for Greg’s attention. “The perfume, not the cologne.”
“Which has nothing to do with anything,” I said. “She’s still wearing all those things. The lab can tell you that. Isn’t her behavior more important than her appearance?”
“Exactly,” Greg said, but he failed to reward me with a blinding smile.
A distinguished-looking man, a frequent customer, stepped forward gallantly. “I think maybe she was drunk.”
Greg turned to him. “Oh?”
“She kept bobbing back and forth.”
“She was trying to get my attention,” I said.
Greg graciously bestowed a bemused smile on me. “So, you saw nothing, did you?”
I stood my ground. “I saw nothing but a mousy woman who was trying to sell me a hideous vase.”
Greg turned to Officer Sullivan, the first of Charlotte’s finest on the scene. “That wasn’t in the report, was it?”
Officer Sullivan shook his head. “You can see
where she landed, sir. Just a broken chair. No sign of a vase.”
“That broken chair is a genuine Louis XIV,” I said. “Original upholstery.”
“And outside?” Greg asked.
Officer Sullivan shook his head again. “The car came right up onto the sidewalk and hit her. No vase there either—or in the street.”
“That’s a shame,” Greg said.
“One thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars,” I said, “but I would have taken off fifteen percent just for the asking.”
They both stared at me.
“The woman is dead,” I reminded them. “There’s nothing to be done about that. I, however, have a smashed window and a ruined chair.”
Greg turned back to Officer Sullivan. “Any witnesses outside the shop?”
Officer Sullivan shook his head. “Everyone was inside because of the downpour, but there are three witnesses who claim to have seen it from the shop across the street.”
“Any of them get a make on the car? See who was driving?”
Officer Sullivan grinned. “All three of these people are sure of what they saw. One saw a black Cadillac driven by a middle-aged black man. One saw a beige station wagon driven by a young red-haired woman. The third saw an old white man in a blue Ford van. A large one. Possibly commercial.”
“Figures,” Greg said. “Which direction was the driver coming from?”
Officer Sullivan glanced at his notes and chuckled. “One said from the north, one from the south, and the third was positive about everything except that.”
“I saw the car,” the leggy blonde said. Personally I thought she was lying shamelessly just to get Greg’s attention.
The Wedgwood eyes focused on her expectantly.
“It was the black man in the black Cadillac. He was going south.” The blonde pointed north.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
The blonde glared at me.
Greg’s eyes twinkled in amusement. “Do tell, Ab—I mean, Ms. Timberlake.”
“It was the blue Ford van,” I said.
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
“Look outside. All the parking places are full. That’s the most common complaint we get. But there”—I pointed to the right—“is the loading zone. Only trucks and large vans are permitted to park there, and then for only five minutes.
“My guess is that the driver of the van had pulled into that spot and was waiting for Ms. Troyan to come out. He then accelerated and”—I pointed to my smashed window—“there you have it.”
“Likely story,” the blonde said, tilting her man-made shnoz skyward.
“Could be true,” Greg said.
I felt so proud of myself that I didn’t even mind when the blonde slammed my front door behind her, precipitating a second shower of broken glass.
“D
amn good job,” Bob Steuben boomed. He is a transplanted Yankee from Toledo, and has a Yankee accent, but his voice would make a bullfrog jealous.
I jumped—higher than a bullfrog, I’m sure.
“We didn’t mean to scare you,” Rob Goldburg said.
We were standing on the sidewalk in front of the Den of Antiquity. I had started out admiring the window, which had been repaired late the day before, but I had somehow managed to become deeply lost in thought.
“You guys want to come in for coffee? I’ve got plenty of doughnuts.” I waved a white paper bag.
Rob looked at it longingly. Like me, he is a doughnut freak. Bob, his life partner, is a gourmand who eschews any food normally eaten with the fingers. Dunking is a definite no-no.
“Mostly just glazed,” I said, “but there is at least one raspberry jelly, and it’s yours.”
The two men exchanged glances, and the raspberry jelly won out.
“But just for a minute,” Bob said. “We came in early to rearrange the merchandise in our front window—just in case.”
I smiled and unlocked my door. The odds of an
other body hurtling through a window on Selwyn Avenue were undoubtedly rather slim. Still, I could understand their concern.
Bob and Rob—the Rob-Bobs, as I like to call them—own The Finer Things, a truly splendid shop just next door to mine. Ever since they bought it, I have found myself upgrading my merchandise. This is an unconscious act, I am sure. However, I am far from achieving the height of sophistication practiced by my good neighbors, and am always willing, if not eager, to learn from them.
I held the doughnut bag aloft like the rabbit at a greyhound race, and the men trooped in after me. While Bob wandered around nervously, Rob and I dug into the breakfast of angels. I was on my third glazed when Bob shrieked.
Since basso profundos seldom shriek, you can imagine my surprise.
“What the—” Rob said, his mouth as full as mine.
Bob shrieked again.
My heart would have been in my mouth had there been any room. That Rob reached his partner before I did is only because he has longer legs. Frankly I didn’t know what to expect, but the possibility that it might be another body did cross my mind.
Bob was not anywhere near the window, however, but in the far left corner of my shop, in a space I called The Nook. This architectural oddity was necessitated by the construction of a public toilet last year. It took me awhile to figure it out, but customers are more likely to browse when they are comfortable.
At any rate The Nook is a small space—just six feet square—and it is the only spot in my shop not visible from the cash register. Consequently only small items of relatively little value are displayed there. The previous month it was a collection of carnival glass. On that particular day The Nook was
home to an eighteenth-century pine cupboard, the shelves of which were lined with spindle toys.
I arrived at The Nook to find Bob standing by the cupboard, a look of absolute rapture on his face. He was cradling an ugly gray vase in his hands.
“Shit!” Rob said. Rob is a local boy, born and bred, and it took him three syllables to say the word.
I could feel the doughnuts and my heart sink to a spot just above my knees. It was undoubtedly the same ugly vase June Troyan had tried to peddle. Not that I’d gotten a close look at it, mind you, but I certainly would never stock something that hideous.
“Oh no,” I wailed, “it’s her vase. Now it will look like I was trying to cover something up. Officer Sullivan will probably think I was flat-out lying.”
The Rob-Bobs turned to stare at me. Rob is in his fifties and devilishly handsome. Tall, muscular, with a touch of gray at the temples, he looks like Cary Grant would have, had the actor belonged to a gym. Bob is slight of build, with a face too narrow for his generous features, but hey, with a voice that can calm the Bosporus Strait, who needs looks?
“Abby, fess up,” Bob boomed.
“Fess up to what?”
“Don’t hold out on us,” Rob said with a knowing smile. “We’re your friends.”
“So you are. But honestly, guys, I didn’t know that disgusting thing was here.”
They burst out laughing. They laughed almost as hard as the time Bob found a pair of pink plastic flamingos in my storeroom. The flamingos, incidentally, were a gag gift for a friend. They were not meant to be sold.
I could feel my face turn red. I know that I have a lot of catching up to do to reach their league, but I am not the neophyte they seem to think.
“Give me a break,” I snapped. “I’ve never touched that disgusting thing before in my life.”
They laughed harder.
I snatched the monstrous piece from Rob’s hands. I would have smashed it on the floor right then and there, but Rob’s right hand grabbed my wrist in a viselike grip. His left hand cradled the vase.
“Abby, this disgusting thing is a Ming dynasty vase. We’d have to clean it up to be sure, but in form at least it appears to be a fine example of the Ch’eng-hua period.”
I inadvertently released my grip on the vase. Fortunately Rob was still cradling it in the palm of his left hand. Even then he had to move fast with his right to steady it. A second later and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t have been able to put that Ming together again.
“Bravo!” Bob boomed.
My mouth was still open wide enough for Sherman and all his troops to enter.
“You’ll see,” Rob said, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket. “There’s a real treasure under this grime. All we need is a little soap and warm water.”
We crammed into the adjacent rest room I had so thoughtfully provided for my customers. It was meant for one person at a time, not three people about to perform a delicate operation.
I stared, still mute, while Rob gently wiped away with a circular motion what must have been a century of soot, grease, and dust. I can only describe the transformation as a flower bud unfolding in time-lapse photography, as in those nature shows Mama used to make me watch when I was a little girl.
This flower was made out of porcelain so thin, it was almost translucent, like the petals of a gardenia held up to the sun. Unlike a gardenia, however, it was a multicolored flower. The underglaze was a delicate blue, but the design was polychrome, with overglaze shades of red, green, yellow, and even aubergine. Although it was a fairly simple design, pri
marily flowers and branching twigs, it was beautifully balanced.
“It’s what they call
tou ts’ ai
,” Rob said reverently. “It means ‘appropriateness of design.’”
As the unveiling progressed we oohed and aahed like participants at a bridal gift shower. So engrossed were we that none of us heard the phone until its eleventh ring.
“Hello,” I said reluctantly. Frankly. I wouldn’t have answered at all, but it was almost opening time, and a good customer of mine had promised to call and confirm a major purchase. Something in the five digit range!
“Abby—there you are! I let it ring twelve times. I was starting to get worried.”
I sighed. “Mama, I’m forty-eight years old, for Pete’s sake. And I don’t even open for another—”
“Two minutes.” I could hear Mama’s pearls clicking against the phone receiver. She fiddles with them whenever she’s stressed.
“What is it?” I asked as pleasantly as a forty-eight-year-old woman can when her mother has just treated her like a child.
“What are you doing tonight, dear?”
I thought fast. I do enjoy spending time with Mama, but—perhaps I do deserve to be treated like a child—I was miffed.
“Greg and I have a date,” I lied. “We’re going out to dinner.”
That was a mistake. Mama adores Greg, and she is the world’s best cook, bar none. As for Greg, sometimes I think he would rather accept food from Mama than anything from me.
“Why don’t the two of you come here instead?” Mama asked. “Say, about seven? I’m making saddle of lamb, new potatoes, and fresh asparagus.”
Mama is a widow who usually eats alone, but you would never know it by the way she dines. Fresh
flowers, a linen tablecloth, and real silver are daily accoutrements at her table. Leave it to Mama to make saddle of lamb for one.
“Greg doesn’t like lamb,” I said honestly.
Mama was unflappable. “Well, then, how does a nice, medium-rare beef Wellington sound? Of course we’d skip the potatoes then. Maybe an artichoke salad instead. But the asparagus stays. I have a new recipe for hollandaise sauce.”
“Artichoke hearts?” I asked hopefully. Mama’s menus had mellowed me. I no longer remembered being miffed.
“Of course,” Mama said. “You can’t put artichoke leaves in a salad.”
“All right, we’ll be there. But only if we get to do the dishes.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mama said, and hung up.
It took me just a second to switch from menus to Ming. I scurried back to The Nook. Rob and Bob were still there, and so was the vase. Rob was gently patting it dry with one of his silk shirttails. Paper towels, he told me, were too rough.
I had been there at the beginning of the transformation; still, I could hardly believe the end product. Just looking at it brought tears of joy to my eyes.
“How much is it worth?” I asked sensibly.
“Five thousand minimum at a dealer’s auction,” Bob said. “Retail between ten and fifteen.”
The tears of joy streamed down my cheeks.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Rob said, “how much did you pay for it?”
“Well, uh—actually I didn’t. I’m not sure, but I think it might have been put here by Ms. Troyan, that poor woman who was hit by the car yesterday.”
“Then of course the Ming’s value is only an academic question,” Bob said, looking pointedly at me.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, it isn’t rightfully yours. You just said so yourself.”
“But I found it in my shop,” I wailed. “What about finders keepers? Isn’t there such a law?”
“Well, you have to notify the police, don’t you? Then they have to track down Ms. Troyan’s heirs, assuming she has any.”
“Assuming she doesn’t?”
“That’s another story, of course. Eventually the vase might end up yours. Unless…”
I reverently took the vase from Rob. It was much lighter than I had expected. “Unless what?”
“Well, unless the vase didn’t belong to Ms. Troyan in the first place.”
The tears slowed. “Who then?”
Bob shrugged. “Maybe it was stolen. Or smuggled into the country. In either case it might take years to sort it all out, and in the end this beauty would probably go up for sale at public auction.”
I stared at him with eyes as dry as cotton balls.
“Don’t listen to him,” Rob said, tucking his wet shirttail back in. “It was all those Toledo winters that made him so negative. He was just giving you one scenario.”
“Oh?”
“You could just keep it, you know. Not tell the police. After all, maybe you did buy it at an auction along with some other stuff, and just never noticed it before.”
Bob gave his partner a reproachful look. “That wouldn’t be right, Robert.”
“But we have no proof that the vase doesn’t belong to her,” Rob protested.
I smiled at him gratefully.
Bob shook his head. It was clear he was disappointed in both of us.
“Anyway, Abby would never do such a thing.” He looked at me pointedly. “Would you?”
I shook my head reluctantly. I would never steal anything, of course. Even we Episcopalians still have that commandment on the books. But I wanted to think of this situation as falling under one of those gray areas of ethics, the kind you can debate for hours in a college dorm with a bottle of Boones Farm wine.
Unfortunately my brain is two and a half decades older, and I now drink chardonnay. While it was possible I might have bought the vase as part of a lot, I never would have set it out for display in The Nook. Besides, I had seen Ms. Troyan holding a vase that looked similar to this one while it was yet in its ugly duckling state, and the odds of two ugly ducklings showing up in my shop were not good. Or so I’d like to think.
“All settled then?” Bob asked gently. “I’ll make the call for you, if you like.”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s my responsibility, so I’ll call.”
He gave me a questioning look.
“I promise,” I snapped.
“Let’s go,” Rob said, taking Bob by the arm.
I meant what I said. I would call Greg, but only to invite him to dinner that night. News about the vase could keep until then. In the meantime I would keep the beauty with me behind the counter. Between customers I could at least fantasize that it was mine.
I put the vase in all its shining glory on a small table against the wall behind the counter that I use as a desk. Then I stepped around the counter to admire the Ming for a few precious seconds before flinging my door open to the public.
In retrospect, I will acknowledge that displaying the Ming, no matter how briefly, was not one of my brightest moves. While it is true that my taste buds
prefer chardonnay, on occasion I still think with a Boones Farm brain.
I had just finished ringing up the sale of an Art Deco mirrored console when the phone rang.
“Den of Antiquity,” I said cheerily. The console had sold for full price.
“Is this the owner?” someone of indeterminate sex asked in a muffled voice.
“Yes. How may I help you?”
“This is Lock, Stock, and Barrel Security Services,” the androgynous voice said. “We’re offering a special this week—”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said politely.
“You’ll want to hear this special.”
“I bet I won’t.”
There followed a long and delightful silence. “Hey lady, I’m just trying to make a living,” the caller said at last.
“Tell you what. I’m with a customer right now, but give me your number and I’ll call you right back.”
I felt for the tablet of notepaper I keep by the phone. Unfortunately it was missing. Not that I would have called right back, mind you, but I would have called. I know, it is absolutely puerile of me—perhaps even unchristian—but I enjoy calling phone solicitors at home in the middle of the night. I don’t set my alarm especially for that, mind you. I just do it whenever I wake up to use the bathroom.
