Chapter Five

Suzanne’s story

On Monday morning, Suzanne woke to Birdie singing a hearty version of I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair. She could not agree with the housekeeper more. George had gone for the day. The sunshine sparkled through the window and robins, their red breasts so bright against the foliage they resembled living Christmas ornaments, festooned the dark trees and dreary lawn. Feeling fine with a week of work ahead, Suzanne bounded down the stairs and shouted to Birdie in the kitchen. “Spring is here!”

She did not find Birdie in the kitchen. Instead, she intercepted the maid in the dining room where the immense table lay covered with an old blue oilcloth. The doors of the massive Renaissance sideboard stood unlocked and open as Birdie hauled out treasure like a fat caliph about to get his weight in gold. But this was silver—ornate, invaluable, Victorian silver. Her polishing cloths and jars of silver cream stood ready for the task. Abruptly, Suzanne changed her plans for the day from beginning on the inventory of the upper rooms to surveying the silver.

“You’ll have to eat in the kitchen, honey. This takes me most of the day.” Birdie grunted as she hauled a huge punchbowl from a low shelf. Suzanne went to help her.

“Feel the weight of this stuff. There must be a hundred ounces of silver here,” she marveled. “Worth a fortune.”

“I always keeps it locked up and out of sight.” Birdie flourished a rag and settled down to a day of polishing. “Go on and eat your breakfast.”

Suzanne brought her orange juice and sweet roll back to an unused corner of the dining room table, then ran upstairs for the card file. Virginia Lee kept a special section set aside for her silver, and the files had been heavily used. Obviously, she’d lavished her time on this area of her collection. Some yellowed cards held notations made in a firm, elegant hand with a blue-inked fountain pen, but most were on crisp, clean sheets scrawled in shaky black ballpoint. The newer cards seemed out of character for the mistress of Magnolia Hill, but then, Virginia’s last years had been spent dying slowly and painfully. Maybe, the fast scrawl represented her sense of time running out.

Suzanne fingered the first card, an old one for a sterling teething rattle, mother-of-pearl handle, Tiffany, circa 1895, valued at $50. Not wanting to bother Birdie who was warming up her hands and her voice with a little humming, she started with the small pieces in the long shallow drawer in the top of the sideboard. Once used for storing table linens, a modern cabinetmaker had inset the space with small cubicles lined in gray flannel. Each niche held an object of Victorian tableware that would have sent her mother into raving fits of ecstasy.

Virginia Lee had owned all the oddities of the era: grape shears with handles like twisted vines, asparagus tongs in Tiffany’s Chrysanthemum pattern, bacon forks, oyster ladles, berry spoons, a chipped-beef server, a set of ice cream forks, even an Unger Brothers food pusher used by children to pursue elusive peas around the plate. Item by item, they were worth no more than twenty to two hundred dollars each, but cumulatively several thousand in melt value, and much, much more to a collector because of the breadth of the collection. As dreary as Suzanne found some aspects of Victoriana, these absurd utensils delighted her.

Chortling over cheese scoops and lettuce forks, she pawed among them most of the morning while Birdie polished and sang under her breath to keep from disturbing her studies. Every item checked out against the cards, with the exception of the baby rattle. She asked Birdie about it.

“Oh, that ole thing was the first bit of silver Miss Virginia brought home for Georgie who hadn’t even been born yet. She was four months along and so slim you couldn’t tell. I said, ‘Now don’t you be tempting things to go wrong by buying all sorts of stuff for your baby, better to wait for the last month,’ but she just laughed and had me boil it, shine it up, and wrap it in flannel. When Georgie come, she give it to him and let him chew all over it. You could see his little tooth marks on it. That rattle is long gone down a crack or lost in the yard. Imagine giving a baby something fine to play with. They can teeth just as well on a frozen carrot.”

With her head bent over her work, Birdie scrubbed diligently at a bit of repousse work on the punchbowl.

“But I guess that was all right for her if it give her some pleasure. By nine months, Miss Virginia got no bigger than a muskmelon down there, not big and sloppy like some women get. She had all these clothes made up special to look nice, while most everybody else just stayed home and wore them big T-shirts or their own man’s shirts when they was breeding. It made no difference to Mr. Jacques. He went out tomcatting around before their first anniversary. Once he took off that uniform, turned out he was just a low-life person. I hate to say it of the dead, but a low-life person. Him too low and her too high with me stuck in the middle. Those were some bad years early on, but things took care of themselves later. Yes, they did.”

Suzanne did not press her to go on, being more interested in the silver than in George’s mismatched parents. She put a question mark on the card for the rattle, stretched, and suggested a lunch break. Birdie agreed, though she had just snacked on coffee and the last of the buns an hour ago.

The day turned strange when George’s car came up the drive. Birdie shrugged and raised her eyebrows to show she had not expected his company for lunch either. He plunged in the door with two long loaves in white paper bags under his arm, smiled without looking at Birdie or Suzanne, and said, “Savoy’s had hot French bread. I thought you ladies would like some for lunch.”

“Nice of you, Mr. George.” Birdie took the loaves and began opening another can of soup to put in the saucepan. “We just having a little chicken noodle today.”

“Great. My favorite.” George smiled inanely again, and stretching his long legs out into the kitchen, took a seat. Birdie eyed him as if he had gone insane.

“I thought my gumbo was your favorite.”

“My favorite of the canned kind, I mean. Look, I brought the mail. Two for Miss Hudson, one for occupant, and three bills for George St. Julien.”

When he looked at his utility bill, the flood of pleasant conversation stopped. Suzanne tried to renew the flow by remarking she’d seen robins, a sure sign of spring. George glanced at her blankly through those heavy glasses, then informed her otherwise.

“No. We only see robins around here in December or January, sometimes February. Then, they all fly north. Robins winter around here.”

She sighed. He had spoiled her joy in the flock, hopping and worming across the lawn. Ignoring George, Suzanne rudely opened and read her letters in front of him while Birdie served the soup. Of necessity, Birdie took hers out to the dining room to eat among the polishing rags since George had taken her chair. She would have offered to eat in the other room, but Birdie, quick to see the situation, moved out. Her speed came from years of practice in coping with the whims of white folks, Suzanne assumed.

Her mother’s letter, long and chatty, began by asking why a week had gone by without so much as a quick e-mail or a phone call. Since she had taken care of that complaint, Suzanne ignored the paragraph, just as she continued to ignore George who kept fidgeting with his soup spoon and knocking his fingers against the kitchen window to startle the robins. The letter ended with a postscript saying that Paul Smith had called to get her new address because he wanted to write and had lost the one Suzanne had given him.

Suzanne had told Paul that she would send him her address when she got to Port Jefferson, but hadn’t done so. No sense in prolonging the relationship since she was one hundred percent sure Paul didn’t want to “be friends.”

Naturally, the second letter came from Paul. After reading it, she allowed her soup to get cold and carried the bowl half-finished toward the sink. No longer ignoring George but simply forgetting he existed, she tripped over his big feet. The yellow broth sloshed on the sleeve of his white shirt as he reached out to catch her. With a strong grip, he steadied her with one hand. For a second, she wondered if George could or would protect her from Paul if the threat in the letter came to pass.

Printed very neatly in heavy lead pencil across a single sheet of computer graph paper, Paul wrote:

Dearest Suzanne,

If you do not return, I am coming to get you.

Your Loving Fiancé,

Paul

The words chilled with their directness. Mentally, she felt frozen, and physically, her arm numbed where George gripped her elbow.

“Is something wrong?” he asked with genuine concern.

She should have told him then, but George was only her employer, a quiet and sometimes bumbling one, not a man whom she could expect to take on her problems or do anything about them. In fact, having a threatening ex-boyfriend might jeopardize her job.

“No. It’s just that I seem to keep ruining your shirts. First brandy, now soup.”

“I drink Jack Daniels and have plenty of shirts.” George dropped her arm when Birdie pushed into the kitchen.

“Go on doing whatever you was doing. Old Birdie has to wash those shirts. Don’t think about me none.”

“I’ll take it off right now and put it in some cold water.” George fled the scene.

“Now, I didn’t mean to do that. I was only joking with him, but Miss Virginia made him jumpy like that. Just when he was starting to warm up to you, too. Why, he hasn’t come home to lunch in months, and this time it wasn’t to see old Birdie.”

Great, Suzanne thought, returning to the silver spread on the dining room table. Now, she had two men she did not want, and one of them happened to be her boss. The afternoon rolled downhill from there. She started to check the larger pieces: the punchbowl; a pair of candelabra; a tea set with an amazing number of pieces from a waste bowl to sugar tongs. Each item seemed to have some little niggling thing wrong with it. The manufacturer’s mark and the sterling symbol were obscured and illegible on the punch bowl, though Virginia Lee listed it as Tiffany. The candlesticks had the proper weight for sterling, but something about their patina bothered her. She questioned Birdie, too heavily, perhaps.

“So you’ve been here thirty years,” Suzanne began subtly.

“More like forty. Mr. Fred and Miss Beatrice took me on right out of school to help old Effie. Then they died within a year of each other, Mr. Fred of a stroke and Miss Beatrice from missing him, I think. She got the pneumonia and wouldn’t call in a doctor ’til it was too late. Effie and me kept the house up until the boys got home from the war and settled everything. Then, Effie retired. Said she was too old to learn new tricks from the likes of Miss Virginia.”

“How often have you polished all this silver over the years?”

“Oh Lawd, least once a month, more when Miss Virginia entertained, maybe not so often after she got sick. I mean Mr. Georgie never has folks over, and it takes all my time to keep the place clean by myself. ’Fore, we had other maids and a cook. I does my best.”

“Of course you do, but look at these candelabra. When a piece has been polished often, it develops this sort of deep glow called a patina. This article seems almost new, but Mrs. St. Julien’s note dates it as 1853 and values the pair at nearly $4,000.”

“Well, I don’t know nothing ’bout that. That’s one of her new candlesticks she got the last five years, traded it for her old set with her antique dealer, trading up she said. So maybe I didn’t shine it so much. It’s hardly been out the bag since she got it. Liked the old ones better myself. They was all covered with curlicues and had these little cups to catch the wax.”

“Bobeches.”

“What say?”

“Bobeches, the little cups that catch the wax.”

“Yeah. They were the devil to clean, but I liked them sticks better. They did sort of glow.”

“Did Mrs. St. Julien trade any of the other pieces?”

“Nearly all the big ones. Trading up, she told me, every time.”

“It’s just that some of the pieces don’t quite match their descriptions.”

“I don’t know about that neither. When Miss Virginia died, the estate people took the inventory, one punch bowl, one tea set. They was all here. They still is.” Birdie’s lower lip protruded belligerently.

“She might have made some mistakes,” Suzanne suggested, trying to calm her down.

“Miss Virginia collected that silver for thirty years. You just a kid. What you know about it?”

Suzanne decided not to argue the point. She needed Birdie’s goodwill, and even more, her friendship in this lonely house.

“I think her dealer may have tried to cheat her.”

“Not old Mr. Mort. She dealt with him twenty years or more. Why he’d go off to New Orleans or New York, even London, England, and Paris, France, and bring back things only for her. They would sit right here at this table, and I’d bring tea in the special service. Mr. Mort would be showing her something nice from one of his drawstring bags. Each and every time, he’d admire the tea set, and Miss Virginia would say what a pleasure it gave her just to use it.”

“I’d like to talk to Mr. Mort myself.”

“You’d have to go on up to heaven. Mr. Mort’s been dead about twelve years.”

“Then, who traded for Mrs. St. Julien’s candlesticks?”

“Mr. Mort’s son, Randolph, took over the business. He’s nothing like Mr. Mort. He’d come and go with his little bags while Miss Virginia lay sick. He’d see her in her bedroom and lock the door behind him like I’d steal his ole silver. They never called for tea or coffee, and he never stopped to pass the time of day. No wonder Miss Virginia didn’t buy from him. They’d trade or they wouldn’t, and that was that. And every time he come, she’d say, ‘Don’t tell Mr. Georgie that Randolph has been here because he don’t like Mr. Royal.’ Royal, that’s the family name. Sounds made up, don’t it?”

“Why didn’t Georgie, I mean Mr. St. Julien, like Mr. Royal?”

“Because Georgie ain’t one of those sissy boys, I told you, and Mr. Royal is. Oh, young Mr. Royal was married, all right. He has a son, too, but we all knew why that marriage didn’t take. Yes, we do. He moved the shop to Opelousas after Miss Virginia died, said he needed more ‘custom’ to survive, but he wasn’t fooling anybody about why he got out of town. He married to one of the Patout girls under false pretenses, and her brother, Billy, was fixing to fix him forever.”

“By ‘sissy boy’, you mean gay? Randolph Royal preferred men to Mr. Patout’s sister?”

“You got that right!”

Birdie warmed up again, now that the conversation turned to local gossip and away from the silver. Unfortunately, Suzanne needed to know the whereabouts of Randolph, not his sexual preferences.

“I think I’d like to meet Mr. Royal.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I think I must because something is definitely wrong here.” She picked up the sugar tongs that did not quite match the rest of the tea service and told Birdie that she wanted to borrow it for a while.

“You got to ask Mr. Georgie.”

“Naturally.” Suzanne had a few favors to ask George. Maybe it was just as well he had warmed to her lately.

****

Suzanne approached George that evening while he imbibed his solitary drink. He had not come home for dinner following his appearance at noon. She knocked on the door of his den loud enough to announce her presence, but not loud enough to make him slop his drink on another white shirt.

“Would you like something?” he asked every cordially, removing his stocking feet from the ottoman and trying to slip them back into his size thirteen shoes. Suzanne took another of the big leather chairs and accepted a gin and tonic that tasted a little oily without the twist of lime. Some liquor might move the conversation along, but she wanted him to know immediately this was a business call, not a social visit.

“Actually, I’ve run into a few problems with the inventory. I’d like to do a simple test on some of the silver with your permission.”

“What for?”

“Well, to be honest, I want to see if it is all sterling or just plate.”

“My mother was an infallible woman. If she said it was sterling, it is.”

He looked more stubborn than angry with those vertical lines forming behind the bridge of his glasses and his rather nice full lips turned down in a frown. She tried again. “It’s a routine verification. If you won’t let me do a test, then I must assume it is all plate. That’s the rule when it comes to silver.”

“Okay, do the test. My mother was never wrong.” He paused to take a big gulp of his drink and looked over at her. “I thought we might go to the Roadhouse for dinner on Saturday night. Maybe, we could discuss your results then.”

She almost said she planned to be at Joe’s Lounge on Saturday night, but changed her mind. She had more favors to ask, and one favor deserves another. “Fine,” Suzanne answered. “What time?”

“Seven?”

“Good. Oh, could I borrow your car tomorrow? I have to drive into the city to get some supplies for my test, and I’d like to take along one of the small pieces to get a second opinion from a dealer.”

“You’ll have to get up early and drive me to work. I’m always in the office by eight.”

“I don’t mind.”

“See you tomorrow early then.” He seemed pleased to be giving her his car keys, and she felt a trifle guilty as she went off to bed jingling them in the palm of her hand.

****

They had another of those old married couple, companionable mornings. George slung a leather garment bag and his briefcase into the backseat. Suzanne did not ask about the baggage and drove him to work saying very little on the way. She half expected him to give her a peck on the cheek and say, “Have a nice day, honey,” but he simply waved on his way to the office door.

Suzanne had no trouble getting to the larger town—only one road went there—and little problem finding Royal Antiques in the yellow pages. The ad stood out as the most artistic block in the antiques section. While waiting for Randolph Royal to open his shop, she killed some time drinking coffee in a diner across the street. When he arrived about ten, she gave him fifteen minutes or so to get comfortable, then wandered over. First, she peered at the playful display of antique toys in the window set up to look as if a child had just left the room and would be back at any moment to pile the blocks, feed pennies into the mechanical bank, and ride the rocking horse. A little brass bell rang as she entered and brought Randolph Royal hurrying to her side.

“Is there something special I could show you, or would you like to browse?”

She did not find Randolph Royal to be flamingly gay, not compared to some of the activists she’d known in college. Slim of build and balding, he wore a tidily-trimmed moustache to make up for his hair loss. His well-manicured fingers hosted several large gold rings. He was, perhaps, a tad too graceful for Port Jefferson tastes, and she suspected that town had a very low tolerance for the different. Though admiring his neat little shop with its clever displays, she recalled how her mother always said the best buys came out of dingy, cobweb-afflicted places. Almost without intending it, she adopted her mother’s persona.

“I found these lovely tongs in a shop in New Orleans, and I’ve just fallen in love with the pattern. Beautiful, isn’t it?” Suzanne thrust her possession at Randolph for his perusal and praise.

“I’ve been looking for matching pieces ever since. I have the creamer and the teapot, but I’m really looking for the sugar bowl. I saw your charming little shop while I had coffee at the café and thought I’d inquire before going on my way to Alexandria.”

As Randolph Royal handled the small treasure, his palms became sweaty. “A set like this passed through my hands a few years ago, but a wealthy client purchased it. I haven’t seen anything similar since then.”

“Do you think your client would be interested in selling?” she pressed. “If you would give me his name and address, I could…”

“Oh no! Certainly not. He is a private collector and sensitive about his dealings. It would be a breach of trust on my part to divulge his name.”

“Rotten luck for me. Oh well, I’ll be passing through Port Jefferson on my way north. It’s such an old town. Perhaps, I’ll have some luck there.”

“Believe me, there is nothing but nothing in Port Jefferson. I used to have the only antique shop in town and could barely make a go of it. With only a very few exceptions, the people are impossibly ignorant and crude with no appreciation of art or beauty. I tell you, it’s a hell hole. I had to get away from that place.”

Randolph clutched her arm and stared into her eyes in his attempt to convince her of the wickedness of somnolent Port Jefferson. “And to think my son is being raised there among the barbarians.”

Now, he captured both of her arms and dropped the tongs. “The laws of this state are as backwards as that town, I tell you. I’m not allowed to see my son unless his mother or his Uncle Billy or his grandfather is present, and I cannot endure that family. Louise was so sweet and innocent when we married, but she turned out to be a true Patout just like the rest of the clan.” He released her arms and sighed as he picked up the tongs. He plucked a polishing cloth from his coat pocket and wiped them off.

“I’m so sorry. I hope I haven’t scratched it. Forgive my little outburst. Port Jefferson is a sore point with me.”

More like a raw nerve, Suzanne thought, but replied soothingly, “Oh, I do understand. My gay brother had similar problems after his divorce, but he was able to get permission to see his children as often as he wanted.” She wondered how Blake would take her portraying him as a homosexual, divorced father when he was none of the above, a little payback for introducing her to Barry Cashman.

“What enlightened country are you from? It must be paradise!”

“Actually, it’s near Philadelphia. I have only a limited time to spend here and had better be moving along. It’s been a pleasure to see your shop.” She extricated herself from a conversation becoming far too intimate for her tastes. She’d come to uncover a crooked antiques dealer and gotten his life story instead.

“Just a thought. I might be seeing my client in a few weeks. I could ask if he would be interested in selling the tea service, but more likely, he might want to buy your pieces. Please leave your name and address and telephone number. I will contact you if he wants to get in touch.” Randolph produced two “Royal Antiques” business cards, beautifully embossed, white on white, with a golden crown above the name.

Thinking that the best lies are the ones closest to the truth, Suzanne wrote “Mrs. Patricia Hudson” boldly across the back of one card and gave her parents’ address. Her mother would not mind being on one more antique store mailing list. She pocketed Mr. Royal’s card and went on her way to the nearest drug store.

When she asked the druggist for dichromatic acid, he snapped that he did not run a chemical supply house. Suzanne wondered if he knew what the substance was. Instead of arguing with him, she tried a placating technique and bought a bottle of aspirin, asked his advice about which vitamins he recommended, and finally came away with a small glass bottle of nitric acid. She could have tried a specific gravity test, but frankly had done that only once in one of her seminars and doubted the outcome. The hardware store down the street provided a set of small, fine-toothed files. Mission completed and suspicions inflamed, she made her way back to Port Jefferson by lunchtime.

Birdie, having prepared a luscious chicken salad full of chopped pecans and green grape halves, got a little put out when Suzanne barely touched her meal in a desire to get at the silver immediately. Birdie absolutely refused to give up the key to the cabinet and took exactly sixty minutes to finish her salad, crackers, iced tea, and a dish of ice cream. Slowly, Birdie swayed through the kitchen and dining room. Painfully, she knelt by the latch and fiddled with the lock for several minutes, then parted the doors of the sideboard with a slow motion gesture.

Suzanne snatched up the punch bowl and lugged it into the kitchen. Her set of metal files and the acid sat ready by the sink. Birdie gasped when she began to saw a very small notch into the base of the bowl. With her best chemistry class technique, Suzanne pulled the stopper on the acid bottle between two fingers and placed a drop on the scratch. The acid turned a sickly green. Most of the large pieces in Virginia St. Julien’s collection tested the same way. Except for the candlesticks, George’s infallible mother had amassed the largest assortment of forged silver-plated replicas she had ever seen.

The candlesticks still puzzled her. They tested as sterling silver. Then, she applied her file to the fine crack around the base and prayed she wasn’t destroying a $5,000 antique. She hadn’t. The base popped off like the lid of a paint can. Beneath the silver shell lay pure cement. A few of the large bowls had been similarly packed in the base. As for the tea set, only the overlooked sugar tongs were sterling. The rest of the pieces tested as silver plate adhering to a poor casting of the original set.

Birdie disappeared during the first act of desecration and pounded down the hall to the telephone. Suzanne could hear the maid reporting her crimes to George. Birdie returned and found her standing over the dismembered candlesticks, file in hand like a murder weapon.

The housekeeper crossed her arms over her big bosom and said, “Mr. George says not to worry, just to help you out. He’s going down to Lafayette to work with a client for the rest of the week and check out a new business. Says he see you Saturday night.”

Birdie stared fixedly at the candlesticks as she gave her report. “Just ’cause I said I didn’t like those as good as the old ones don’t mean you should of done that to ’em.”

“Look.” Suzanne tapped the silver base into place. “Now only the experts will know this is a fake, but I dread telling George his infallible mother was duped.”

“Honey,” said Birdie, “I’m glad I don’t work weekends.”