The Big Steal (4 page)

I laughed. “Oh, I hardly think Wynderly would make the
New York Times
, scandal or not. But say, keep that article for me, will you?”

“Sure. So about the Delft. Did you find out who the appraiser
was—the one who said the charger was worth two thousand dollars?”

“Not yet. So far all I have is the list of broken and stolen items Matt Yardley sent to me. My task for tomorrow is to try to wrangle some paperwork from Michelle … if I can. And that's something else that's frustrating me. When the house was open, the hours were ten to four, which is when she left today, even though I wanted to stay later. If I could
only
get my hands on a few things in the house,” I said, thinking out loud.

“Such as? What would you go for first?”

“Let's see. Hmm.” The Tang horses seemed too obvious a choice. What else had I seen that I had wondered about?

“I glimpsed a terrific inlaid English gaming table that has great lines, but since nearly every British faker alive has copied that style—Who knows? And there's a copper weathervane over the fireplace in one of the less formal rooms,” I said, remembering the million-dollar prices a couple of weathervanes had recently sold for. “It's of a trotting horse and has a good patina. But again, is it real? Could go either way.”

“So. I can tell you're not completely miserable.”

Good old Peter. His sensible, grounded ways could always rein me in.

“OK,” he said, “here's my take on the situation. It's really pretty simple. Tomorrow just march into Wynderly with an air of quiet authority and very politely tell Michelle Hendrix what you have to have. Original bills of sale. Earlier appraisals, inventory, whatever.”

Truth is, on the drive from Wynderly to the B and B I had already planned to do exactly what he was telling me to do.
Still, hearing Peter's advice reassured me. Like Mother's voice in my head.
You catch more flies with honey
, she would say when I was angry with one of my childhood friends and would threaten to get even.

“Peter, you're absolutely right,” I said. After all, no compliment is ever wasted on a man. “I know what I'll do. I'll arrange it so she
has
to leave me alone. Then, I'll head to the attic. I've made enough appraisals to know that's where the old bills and canceled checks are stored, and
they're
what I need.” I smiled to myself. “Anyway, you and I know that more often than not, that's where some
treasures
are apt to be hidden away.”

Peter laughed. “Always the adventurer, aren't you? You really shouldn't be worrying so much about all this,” he said. “I'm sure you have the situation well in hand. Just get the job done. Speaking of such, do you have any idea when you'll be getting back to Leemont?”

My heart stood still. Why had I even allowed myself to think about Matt? I waited to hear what Peter would say next. He didn't disappoint me.

“No? Well, take care and call me if there's anything I can do to help. I'm right here.”

Dear Antiques Expert: I recently bought a vase that I thought was marble in an antiques mall, but when I got it home a friend told me it was faux marble and not the real thing. Is faking marble something new in the antiques world?

Faux, or fake, finishes have been around since ancient Greeks painted wood and plaster to resemble gold and marble. During the Renaissance, faux finishes imitating marble and stone were particularly popular, especially for cathedral and palace interiors. In the 18th and 19th centuries, inexpensive woods were often painted to look like pricey rosewood and tiger maple. Today, new materials like hydroston, as well as plaster, wood, ceramics, glass, and others can be faux finished to fool the eye as jade, malachite, marble, pearl, bamboo … the list is endless. That's why the old advice, caveat emptor (buyer beware), should always be heeded.

B
Y THE MORNING
of the next day, I was actually looking forward to getting back to Wynderly. I had a plan. And with my resolve to think first and speak second, and then to speak kindly, surely I'd be able to make some headway.

But the first glitch came when I overslept. I had to rush to get to Wynderly by ten o'clock. When Michelle wasn't there, I was stuck. Even if I had known how to reach her, my cell phone reception was kaput. Trying to keep a positive attitude, I took advantage of the moment to get a feel for the place without Michelle's intrusion. Looking up at the house, it was as if the attic was beckoning to me.

In truth Wynderly was a splendid structure. But reaching the diamond-shaped leaded glass windows with buckets and sponges when they needed washing, and the heights of the high-pitched slate roofs with hammers and tools when they began to leak, must have presented a challenge. Plus, securing ladders against those ragged clinker brick walls would be tricky. Scaffolding would be the only answer.

And the grounds. Summer's overgrown vines and hedges gave the place an unkempt look. Ivy, which once had defined Wynderly's striking lines, now ran rampant along its chimneys and gables, turning the house's majesty into mystery. Even its casement windows were darkened by gnarled ink green tangles. What had once been picturesque was now tomb-like. Nothing about the place felt Southern. The South of France or southern Italy, perchance, but not our antebellum South.

The gardens were in even worse state than the house. Without hands to prune the shrubs in the maze, some had spread like wildfire while others had withered into brown stumps. What would eventually become of Wynderly, I wondered as I reached down to yank up the periwinkle vine that was growing on a marble figure of Pan. Just then I heard a car approaching.

At the front door, Michelle was fumbling with the keys and alarm system. She gave me a weak smile. “I hate this thing,” she said.

We shed our coats in her office, all the while speculating about the weather. It was the first time she had allowed me inside her inner sanctum. I'd left my office in disarray, but this was a rat's nest. Battered file cabinets lined every available wall space; one even blocked three-quarters of a window. Scrapbooks and yellowed boxes were piled under tables. The only way to distinguish Michelle Hendrix's desk from the other flat surfaces in the room was that she placed her pocketbook on it. Her computer had to be at least fifteen years old. When I asked Michelle about it she sighed.

“No e-mail. No spreadsheet program. Want to see the disks?”

“That's OK.” I was tempted to ask her about appraisals and inventories but decided to stick to my original game plan. “If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to start the morning by seeing the other damaged pieces that were left behind,” I said, keeping my vow to be nice. “That way I won't be in your way, Michelle. If you can just point me in that direction. And this afternoon I'd like to see if I can find receipts and bills of sale. Perhaps the attic would be a—”

“But you haven't even seen the second and third floors,” she interrupted. “I'm going to show those to you now.” Her tone was so commanding, I didn't dare suggest otherwise.

For the next two hours we roamed among lonely bedrooms and sitting rooms, dressing rooms and morning rooms, from nook to cranny, a new room at every turn. It struck me how
no books or papers were lying around, no hint of a family ever having lived there. It was cold and sterile, the way most house museums are. No wonder people don't want to visit them.

These rooms were as much a jumble of styles and periods as those I'd seen downstairs. Everywhere billowing yards of elegant French silk damask, rich English toile, and heavy Italian lace competed for attention. In the ladies' bedrooms, every dressing table was skirted in layers of netting or satin, sometimes both. And every room was drowning in drapes.

As for the furniture, it was mostly what Mother always called “Gigi” furniture—gold and gilt curves and curlicues in the French and Italian styles. The exception was the occasional Oriental piece. As far as I could tell, the only reason for any of the furniture, decorations, or art to be in this part of Virginia so proud of its understated elegance was that it had caught the Wyndfields' eyes. Then again, there
were
a few gems, like the outstanding Louis XIV tortoiseshell bracket clock. But Michelle had rounded the bend of the long hall so quickly, I didn't dare hang back to examine it.

Every so often Michelle would impart a little information about Hoyt and Mazie—how wonderful they were, how grandly they entertained, how wealthy they'd been. She had said next to nothing about any of the furnishings or objects until we reached what she termed Mazie's precious stone room.

“See the doorknobs,” she said. “Jade. And the mantel is malachite. And the ginger jars”—she pointed to the pair of deep blue urn-shaped jars on the green marbleized mantel—“lapis lazuli. And that chair over there … pure jade. The Wyndfields were far ahead of their time.” Her eyes sparkled.
“Can you believe that Mazie and Hoyt had visited the Taj Mahal in the twenties?” Her chest swelled with pride like a kid boasting on the playground. “I've read that the furniture at the Taj Mahal was just inlaid with stones. Mazie and Hoyt had whole objects and pieces made of them.”

I was tempted to tell Michelle about faux lapis and malachite finishes, about the do-it-yourself kits available. I wanted to tell her how glass has been made to look like jade for centuries. And as for the malachite and lapis—coat after coat of paint and varnish applied to sanded and shellacked wood followed by more shellac or varnish could be patterned to imitate those stones and fool the eye. Instead, I kept quiet.

We had begun to move through another wing of the rambling house when a cacophony of chiming clocks signaled the noon hour. After Michelle's closing up of the house at precisely four yesterday afternoon, and her arrival after ten this morning, I wasn't surprised when she announced that we would now break for lunch.

Back in Michelle's office, and over sandwiches, I tried to get some innocuous conversation going.

“So, when exactly did Wynderly close?” I asked.

“Hmm. A few months ago.”

“That must have been a disappointment to the groups with tours scheduled.”

“There're other places around that give tours.”

“I guess you're right,” I said.

Well, I had a job to do. I started by fawning over Mazie and Hoyt's things, how exceptional, wonderful, beautiful, and rare they were. I told her how, now that I had seen more of this magnificent place, I better understood how terrible it must
have been for her that the burglary had taken place. “I know you must be devastated. Yet,
you're
the only one who can help me, Michelle,” I said.

What I really needed to do, I explained, was roam around the attic to see what was up there. Experience had taught me that
all
the finest museums eventually found it necessary to move their archives when things got crowded. The question was where such papers might be at Wynderly. The basement, an outbuilding, or the attic.

“And I totally sympathize with your not having the time to go through everything that must have accumulated here over the years,” I continued, “
plus
tend to so many other duties, and now the theft. Just the family's pictures and scrapbooks and papers …” I swept the room with my eyes, shaking my head in wonderment.

A great sigh came over her. “It's been crazy,” she said, nodding. “There's all this, and then the bills and invoices and correspondence … and phone calls that come in.”

“I can't imagine,” I said. “Perhaps if you're not having to fuss over me, you'll have a chance to organize your files. I think that way we'll be able to keep the insurance company happy. They're eager to pay the claim as quickly as possible.”

“Really?” Michelle Hendrix looked away, but I caught a faint smile on her lips.

That's how I had managed to escape Michelle's clutches and get that time alone in Wynderly's attic, which is where this story really began. As it turned out, I had had just time enough up there alone to further raise my suspicions. But at that point suspicions were all I had come up with—that and the papers
I'd absconded with. Suspicions that somewhere, in among all the furniture and papers and clothes, and heaven knows what else, there was a story waiting to be told.

D
ESPITE MICHELLE'S INSISTENCE
that we had to hurry and not be late for the board meeting, I walked slowly to her office. In addition to fighting with my conscience about the papers I had taken, I was trying to soak up some of the warmth of the heated house, which felt good after the cold dampness of the attic.

Michelle stood behind her desk, compact in hand, fixing her hair. Behind her, one of the ancient file cabinet drawers was partially open and piles of yellowed folders and paper were spread out on the desk in front of her.

“What about you? Looks like you might have had better luck than I had up in that cold attic,” I said, fishing.

“I'm getting there,” she said. “I
have
found a much earlier appraisal for you, one from right after Hoyt's death in 1968. I don't think it will do you much good. I did find another one from the 1980s.” She handed it to me. “But no receipts. Lot of bills marked paid, but they're for house repairs and office supplies and all paid for by the foundation. So many people have worked here since Mazie died. One filing system would be started, but when the next person came, they'd put in a new system. Redo it all. It's a mess.” She threw both hands in the air. “I've been trying to straighten some of it out, but …”

Maybe Peter was right. It could be she was just overwhelmed.

“Oh, well,” Michelle said, dejectedly. “We can talk more
after the meeting.” She glanced at her watch. “Or tomorrow. Don't guess any of us know what to expect this afternoon.” Her words had an ominous ring. “In fact, we need to move on.”