CHAPTER NINE

 

The gallery door opened abruptly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Come in. Come in." Stefan held the door open. His bow tie was crooked, and his shirt cuffs flopped enough past his hands that he could have used the cotton fabric to polish the brass push plate. "I'm sorry you had to wait. I was on the phone with a customer."

"I understand." I managed to answer before Matt could resume his teasing of Stefan.

Stefan released the door as soon as I was inside, leaving Matt to fend for himself.

"I've got the four-patch laid out in the back room." Stefan turned and led the way through the cluttered gallery.

I followed at a safe distance, half expecting him to trip over the hems of his pants, which caught occasionally on splinters in the wood floors. Matt was right behind me.

The place was a disorganized mess, more akin to a junkyard than a traditional art gallery or the commercial elegance of Monograms. The displays ranged from baskets filled with hand-forged wrought iron pieces to six-foot-tall wood carvings and stacks of embroidered tablecloths. The ceiling's light fixtures were barely bright enough to prevent customers from walking into furniture.

Stefan looked at me over his shoulder. "I try to keep the really valuable textiles completely in the dark out back. Sunlight is as bad for them as it is for human skin, you know."

"I do know." Even Tremain had kept his more valuable quilts out of the direct sunlight. Assuming, of course, that the four-patch I'd seen on his dimly lit back wall was a real antique and the others scattered around the shop were more recent. "I'm a certified appraiser, remember?"

"Of course, of course," Stefan said. "I'm sorry. I'm used to dealing with amateurs. I like to give them the information they need to understand what they're buying. I suppose I don't have to tell you all the ways this four-patch is consistent with its purported age either. You'll see for yourself that the colors are right, the materials are right, and even the simple design is right."

"Four-patches have been common throughout the decades, so that's not a foolproof way to date the quilt," I said, mostly for Matt's benefit. Stefan seemed more knowledgeable than most quilt dealers. "Really simple designs have become popular among modern quilters in the last few years."

"The modern ones tend to be more planned than the antiques though," Stefan said. "There's more consistency in the prints today, more materials purchased specifically for the quilt, less of the creative substitutions that come from using real leftovers."

"It sounds like you've been doing some studying too."

"It's part of my job to know what real art looks like." Stefan glanced at Matt. "And what could have been breathtaking if the artist had only pushed himself a little harder."

The one thing I still found disconcerting about living in Danger Cove was that the long-time residents knew each other's backgrounds in detail and assumed that everyone else did too. Usually, I just ignored the comments I didn't understand, but I sometimes, like now, I really wondered what was going on.

"Some of us don't aspire to true art," Matt said amiably. "We prefer to be crassly commercial."

That didn't explain anything, but it really wasn't any of my business, so I let it go.

Stefan snorted and then led us into the back room. The space was completely dark, without even a single window. Even when he flicked the dimmed ceiling lights on, the room wasn't bright enough to do any reading or detailed work. It was going to be a real challenge to determine the exact colors of the quilt spread out on a muslin sheet covering a table in the center of the room.

Stefan pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, which were quickly obscured by his drooping shirt cuffs. He offered me another pair of gloves.

"I've got my own." I raised the messenger bag's strap over my head to set it down on the countertop that ran along the wall beside the doorway. "Maybe Matt could use that pair."

"He doesn't need to touch anything."

I shrugged. "It's human nature for people to want to touch textiles, to experience the texture, not just the color. I'm sure Matt wouldn't do anything intentional to harm the quilt, but if he's wearing the gloves, he won't do any unintentional harm either."

Stefan grudgingly handed over the gloves.

Matt grinned while he pulled them on. "It's not that bad, Stefan. Just think of the fortune you could make, selling pictures of me in church-lady gloves."

"No pictures in here," Stefan said, horrified. "You might as well take a knife or bleach to the quilt as shine a flash on it."

My eyes had adjusted to the gloom while I dug in my bag for my own gloves and pulled them on. I'd been careful not to look directly at the quilt until I was ready to pay attention to my first impression. My subconscious often noticed clues to the quilt's history that didn't register on a more conscious level.

This quilt was double-bed-sized, entirely of square blocks made out of two dark squares and two light squares, alternated checkerboard-style. These four-patch blocks were then set out in rows, with plain squares between them, and there was no border around the edges. The fabrics had faded with time, so what stood out most was simply the contrast between dark and light, rather than individual colors.

"Could we turn up the lights just a little bit? I really need to get a better look at the colors."

Stefan was as miserly with the lighting as the pre-Christmas Scrooge had been with money, but after several incremental increases, he finally brought the lighting to a level where I could do my job.

The quilt had originally included colors from the full range of the rainbow. The reds, greens, and purples had turned into somewhat muddy browns, and the yellows had faded, but they were clearly identifiable, along with the blues and blacks that had stayed truer to their original shades.

My first impression was that this was a real antique. As Stefan had said, the colors were right, the block design was right, and the overall design was right.

Still, I needed to do the job thoroughly, which meant collecting evidence for my conclusion. I measured the edges of the quilt and the various elements of the design. It was, as Stefan had claimed, a basic four-patch design. The pieced blocks each consisted of four two-inch squares, two dark alternating with two light prints, and these blocks alternated with four-inch squares in a variety of light prints.

The craftsmanship was good but not as extremely close to perfection as modern measuring and cutting tools made possible. In fact, there were a number of squares that didn't line up properly, and even one block where, instead of alternating dark and light, there were three dark squares and only one light square.

Stefan pointed to that mis-colored square, stretching his arm out far enough that his gloved hand was no longer entirely covered by his shirt cuff. "That's a humility block. You see them a lot in real quilts of this era. It's an intentional mistake, a humble reminder that only God can make something that's perfect."

"It makes for a nice story," Matt said, "but I've heard it before with other types of art, and I suspect it's an early urban legend. People tend to make mistakes and not notice them until it's too late to fix them, so we need to come up with an excuse for their existence."

"You would know about mistakes and excuses," Stefan said, but Matt didn't rise to the bait for once.

Matt might give the impression of being laid-back, but I knew a stubborn streak when I saw one. It was obvious he didn't want to talk about the details of his past in front of me, and I had enough secrets of my own that I didn't want to risk bringing to his attention by asking about things he didn't want to talk about. Better to stick to safe topics. Like quilt history.

"Stefan's at least partly right," I told Matt. "Regardless of whether the mistakes are intentional or not, humility blocks are indeed common in antique quilts and less so in modern quilts."

"It was one of the first things I noticed about the quilts Tremain copied from my gallery," Stefan said. "He always changed the humility blocks. Like he was 'fixing' the original, making it 'better.' His copies tended to be a little too perfect."

"I've seen a couple of the fakes," Matt said. "I can't speak to the designs, but the sewing itself was really exquisite."

"They were forgeries," Stefan said with a scowl. "Abominations. Nothing exquisite about them at all."

I could see both sides of their argument. "The creators of the reproductions were probably underpaid overseas workers. They might have been completely unaware the quilts were being passed off as antiques. There are plenty of legitimately licensed reproductions of museum quilts and their textiles."

"The licensed reproductions are almost worse," Stefan said. "They're the bane of legitimate dealers' existence. Not quite art, not quite fraud. At least until someone like Tremain gets hold of them and removes the label identifying them as reproductions so he can sell them as originals. Then it's out-and-out fraud."

That much we could all agree on. I tossed my measuring tape back into my bag. "No fraud with your quilt though, Stefan. It's the real thing."

As a trial lawyer, even when I had good news to share with a client, there was a bittersweet element to it, since the settlement or judgment came with a reminder of the underlying wrong that led to the litigation. Giving unqualified good news about a quilt's authenticity was a lot less stressful.

Stefan beamed as if I were praising him instead of his merchandise. "I told Gil it was just what she needed for her first acquisition. There's even a name and a date embroidered in a block in the bottom corner. It's just the sort of thing museums and their visitors like to research, to see if they can find the person."

I found the embroidered block: "M. Dolores, 1898." There was no way to be sure whether that was the name of the maker or the recipient, but either way, it was intriguing. If the name could be traced to a family here in Danger Cove, the quilt would go a long way toward enhancing Gil's reputation with her board of directors.

It was a big if, though. "I'll have to see if I can find any information about a Dolores family in Danger Cove in the late 1800s before I give the museum my report. I'll also need a picture of the signature block and the quilt as a whole. Would you mind if we took the quilt out front where we can get some natural light and I won't need a flash?"

Stefan folded the quilt onto the center of the muslin sheet. "Matt can make himself useful for once and help me carry it out to the front counter."

"Is that all there is to your appraisal?" Matt picked up one edge of the muslin sheet. "You just take some measurements and declare it to be legit?"

"It's not quite that simple. A lot of the work is a matter of intuition and expertise, of having been exposed to enough samples that I can just tell when something doesn't feel right."

Stefan lowered his half of the quilt to an oversized antique table just inside the front windows. It wasn't wide enough to display the whole design, but it was long enough to spread it out in sections that could be cobbled together later.

While Stefan went over to the front windows to pull back the heavy curtains, Matt set his end of the quilt down with as much care as Stefan had, making sure the muslin sheet remained between the quilt and the table's wood surface. "Your process sounds a lot like the art world's explanation of 'I know it when I see it.' Don't your clients want something more objective than that?"

"I always give them the approximate dates the prints were manufactured, the history of quilt design, that sort of thing." I watched Stefan smooth the quilt for photography and looked for something I could use to explain my process to Matt. I found it in a small discoloration on a light print. "Look here. Most quilts, no matter how well they're cared for, have some evidence of use after a few years. The fakes are usually in perfect condition. Too perfect."

Once I'd taken the pictures, I had all the information I needed for now, subject to some research on the M. Dolores who had signed the quilt. Perhaps the museum had some records on early residents of the town.

While I put my camera away, I thanked Stefan for showing me the quilt. "You can put it back in storage now, if you want. I'll have the report ready for Gil as soon as possible, and I'm sure she'll be in touch with you."

Stefan had folded the quilt up almost before I'd stopped talking, grabbed the four corners of the sheet, and scurried into the back room, stumbling a couple times as his pants hems caught on the floor.

Once Stefan was out of sight, Matt asked, "So, what's it worth?"

"I've still got to research the signature to make sure the date's correct."

"Is that the only thing that matters? No points for artistic merit or anything?"

"It starts with the date, but then I factor in the quilt's condition relative to its age, plus the overall design and whether it's got some feature that's rarely seen."

"How does this one rate?"

"Fairly high on all three factors. The age alone makes it fairly rare, the condition is excellent, and the design, while not particularly innovative, is a good example of a traditional design. If I can confirm the name on the quilt as someone who lived here in Danger Cove, that will also increase its value to the museum."

"You didn't ask Stefan what he paid for it."

"That doesn't matter for appraisal purposes. I just need to figure out what a collector might pay for it or what it would cost to buy a comparable quilt if this one were stolen or damaged."

"Replacement cost, you mean." Matt pulled out his notepad, this time taking serious notes. "Like for homeowners' insurance."

"Except there's no way to replace the historic materials for this quilt and make one exactly like it."

"Unless you're Tremain," Matt said. "I wonder what he paid to make his reproductions."

"I have no idea." It was a good question though, one I'd like to know the answer to. Even with modern quilts, I never factored in the cost to make the quilt. The amount that collectors would pay generally had no correlation whatsoever to either the value of the materials or the amount of time that went into the creation.

"Can I help?" Stefan said, returning from the back room. "What is it you have no idea about?"

"How much it would cost to make this quilt today, in new fabrics."

"Oh. Sorry." Stefan stripped off his cotton gloves and held out his hand for the pair he'd loaned to Matt. "I don't know. I only deal in antiques, not new stuff. Dee and Emma could tell you though."

"I'll ask them the next time I see them," I said.

"We could go ask them now." Matt relinquished his gloves. "I can give you a ride over to the school."

"I can't right now. I've got some research to do at the museum. The director is anxious to get my appraisal as soon as possible. Dee and Emma would want me to do that first. I'll try to stop by to see them later."

Matt looked like he was going to press me a little harder but then seemed to think better of it. "I'll tell them you were asking about them," he said on his way out of the gallery.

Stefan sighed. "So much promise, and he let it go. Did you know he used to—"

He was cut off by a customer coming through the gallery door.

"Are you the owner?" The white-bearded man in a striped button-down shirt and suspendered jeans ignored me to focus on Stefan. "I'm looking for the gallery owner. I'm told he might have some hand-carved walking canes."

Stefan looked torn between me and the newcomer.

"I was just leaving anyway," I said. "Go take care of your customer. I'll let you know when the appraisal is complete."

As long as I needed to go to the museum again, I'd stop in to see Gil and get an update on how the board of directors was coping with Tremain's death. My preliminary report on Stefan's four-patch might even distract them from all the recent bad news in the local quilt scene.