Merijoy Rucker’s face was flushed with excitement.
“Weezie, darlin’,” she said, hopping up and down on the doorstep of the carriage house. “I know it’s awful of me to drop by this time of the morning without calling first, but I just had to rush over here to show you something.”
I had a towel around my wet hair, and another around my still-wet body. It was only 8 A.M.
“Come on in,” I told her.
“It’s out in the back of my Suburban,” she said, grinning. “Hurry up and get dressed. If I don’t show it to somebody, I’m just gonna bust.”
“Give me a minute,” I said, heading upstairs.
I slid into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, not bothering with a bra.
When I came downstairs, she grabbed me by the hand and fairly dragged me outside to where her car was parked in the lane.
Merijoy flung open the cargo doors to her Suburban. Inside, wrapped in a faded blue quilt, I could see the faint gleam of dark wood.
“What is it?” I asked, pulling at the edge of the quilt to get a better look.
“It’s an antique Empire card table,” she said, yanking the quilt away. “And it came right out of Beaulieu. Could you die? Could you just die?”
With the quilt gone, I could now see Merijoy’s new prize. A cherry-wood card table, with ebony inlay and neatly tapered legs. But it wasn’t the first time I’d seen the card table. Its exact twin was in that antique store in Bluffton.
I sucked in my breath.
“What?” Merijoy said, her smile fading. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Let’s take it out so I can get a better look.”
Together, we eased the table out of the truck.
It was an exact match of the other table.
“Where’d you buy this?” I asked.
She smiled and showed a dimple. “I’m really not supposed to say.”
“Not even to me?” I asked, faking a pout. “I thought we were friends.”
“I know,” she said, throwing an arm around my shoulder and giving me a fond squeeze. “Anyway, I’m awful at keeping secrets. Just promise me you won’t tell Randy Rucker. If he finds out what I spent on this little old table, he will have a conniption fit for sure.”
“Where did you buy it?” I repeated. “Bluffton? A shop called La Juntique?”
“No,” she said, looking puzzled. “Bluffton? What made you think of there?” She looked around, checking for spies. “I bought it from Lewis Hargreaves,” she whispered. “Could you just die?”
It took an entire pot of coffee and half of a pan of Sara Lee cheese Danish to pry the whole story out of Merijoy.
“You know I’ve been busy trying to raise funds to buy Beaulieu back from Coastal Paper Products?” she asked, taking a sip of coffee.
I nodded. I’d seen stories in the newspapers about the historical society’s efforts to have Beaulieu declared a historic landmark. I’d even been invited to the fund-raising gala Merijoy chaired. It was held at the Telfair Academy. But at five hundred dollars a plate, the price of admission was a little steep for me. And besides, I didn’t have a date. To be truthful, with Daniel out of my life, I barely had a life. Eat. Sleep. Junk. Obsess. The only good development lately had been that Tal had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet. The townhouse was empty, and I was sleeping a lot better. But alone.
“Lewis Hargreaves contributed a thousand dollars to my fund-raising campaign,” Merijoy said excitedly. “So, naturally, I called him up to thank him. And that’s when he mentioned that he might have a piece I’d be interested in acquiring. For when we turn Beaulieu into a house museum.”
“The card table?” I asked.
“Lewis told me he bought quite a few nice pieces from the estate sale. And I remembered that cupboard you wanted so badly.”
I felt my pulse quicken. “The Moses Weed cupboard? Did he offer to sell it to you?”
“No,” she said. “I asked about it, and he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. Which I thought was odd. Because we both saw him that day, at Miss Anna Ruby’s memorial, circling around and sniffing at it like a dog in heat.”
“Very odd,” I said dryly.
“Anyway,” she went on, “he sort of hemmed and hawed, and said he had a client ready to buy all the pieces, but he hated to see them go out of Savannah. Because they were made here,” she said.
“How noble of Lewis. How preservation-minded,” I said.
“I practically had to beg to see this piece,” she said. “But he called late last night. Very mysterious. Said if I got over to his shop first thing this morning, he would ‘entertain an offer’ for this card table. Did you ever?”
“I never.”
“I fell in love as soon as I saw it,” Merijoy said. “Now tell the truth, Weezie, do you think fifteen thousand was too much to pay?”
I nearly spit out my coffee.
“You paid fifteen thousand for that card table?”
Her face fell. “Was it too much? I thought, since I’m going to donate it to the house museum, it would be tax-deductible and all. And Lewis said it was made on the premises. Before the Civil War. And he had another buyer in the wings, he said. Somebody from Charleston. I just closed my eyes and wrote the check. I took the money out of my little investment account. Randy Rucker will kill me when he finds out.”
My mind was racing. Had Hargreaves really sold her the piece I’d seen in Bluffton? Or had he sold Merijoy Rucker one of his own carefully manufactured copies?
“It’s a beautiful piece of furniture,” I said finally. “And it would be wonderful to have family pieces in the house, once you’re able to buy Beaulieu.”
“That’s what I thought,” Merijoy said happily.
“One thing that’s important though,” I said, hesitating. “A lot of that table’s worth is based on its provenance. You have to be able to prove it came out of Beaulieu. Otherwise, it’s just another nice piece of nineteenth-century furniture.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Merijoy said. “Lewis told me all about the provenance. He swore me to secrecy, but he finally admitted that horrible Phipps Mayhew let him buy a select few pieces out of Beaulieu before the estate sale. He gave me a copy of the bill of sale and everything.”
“Good,” I said thoughtfully. “Hang on to that piece of paper, Merijoy. And if I were you, I’d just keep quiet, for now, about where you bought that table. Until the society has the funds raised to buy the house.”
“Great idea,” she said, beaming. “I knew you’d love that table as much as I do. And nobody else in Savannah could appreciate it as much as we do.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I told her.
Half an hour later I was on the road to Bluffton. It was late September, still summer, really, in Savannah, but in places I could see where the marsh grasses were starting to turn copper and gold, and the usual shroud of humidity had lifted somewhat. I left the truck’s windows rolled down, and Jethro hung his head out the window to enjoy the feel of the cool air on his pelt.
La Juntique had a Closed sign on the door. It was just barely ten o’clock, but there was a van parked in the lot behind the shop, and I could see through the front window that a light had been turned on inside.
I bit my lip but pounded on the door.
“Hello?” I called loudly. “Anybody around?”
Another light came on in the front of the shop, and a middle-aged woman came hurrying toward the door. She was dressed in paint-spattered jeans and a blue work shirt and looked annoyed.
“We’re closed,” she said loudly. “Come back at noon.”
“Please?” I asked, smiling prettily. “I saw a piece in here last month and I’ve just been dying to find out if you still have it. I drove all the way over from Savannah to check on it.”
She shook her head but unlocked the door. “Which piece were you interested in?”
“It was an Empire card table. Cherry. With ebony inlay.”
I felt her hand close firmly on my arm.
“Were you the woman pestering my niece about that table?”
Her mouth was pressed into a grim line.
“I asked her to call you and let you know I was interested in it. I left my card, but you never called me. And I’m more interested in it now than ever.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Why? What’s so special about that table?”
“I saw that same table just this morning. In Savannah. A friend told me she paid an antique dealer there quite a lot of money for it. She’s even got the original bill of sale.”
“No,” she said flatly. “That’s not possible. I sold it to a couple from California. It was shipped the day after you saw it.”
I crossed my fingers and toes. “If it wasn’t that exact table, it was a really good copy. But the dealer gave my friend a copy of the original bill of sale. It came out of an old plantation house in Savannah. Beaulieu.”
Her lips twitched. “What are you trying to pull? The table I bought came out of Beaulieu. And I have a copy of the original bill of sale too.”
“Your name is Liz. Liz Fuller, right?”
“Right. Who are you?”
“I’m a picker. My name is Eloise Foley, but everybody calls me Weezie. And I’ll tell you what I think is going on, Liz. I think somebody’s making copies and selling them as the real deal. And I think the somebody’s name is Lewis Hargreaves. You bought your table from him, didn’t you?”
She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. It was short, dark hair, frosted with paint spatters that matched the ones on her jeans.
“Look around here,” she said, gesturing to the crowded aisles brimming with knickknacks, crystal, and china. “I’m a junk shop, masquerading as an antique mall. I sell Depression glass, Fiesta ware, discontinued Beanie Babies. Nothing big. I paid the guy five thousand dollars for that table. It’s the most expensive piece I’ve ever handled. A once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
She shook her head. “I should have known better. Guess I just got greedy. That couple stopped in here the same day I put it in the shop. The Follachios. They paid nine thousand for it, without batting an eyelash.”
“Hargreaves gave you all the provenance?”
“Oh yes,” she said bitterly. “I’d never met him before, but I knew his reputation. Big wheeler-dealer. He threw out the bait, and I bit. Hard.”
“If you didn’t know him, how did he approach you?” I asked.
“He didn’t,” Liz said. “I was working here late one night. Refinishing an oak dresser. A young gal came in, asked if the owner was around. Then she asked if I ever bought antiques. From estates. She said she had some pieces from an old plantation house in Savannah. She had them in a van, out in the parking lot. I took one look, latched onto the card table. I knew it was something special.”
“Did you buy it from her?”
“Not right then,” Liz said. “She was being oddly evasive. Finally I told her I could sell it for a lot more if I knew something about the piece’s history. I gave her my card and told her to come back when she had something on paper.”
“And did she?”
“Hargreaves came. The next day. He showed me the bill of sale from Beaulieu, and a photograph of the table standing in a living room with a lot of other period pieces. He said five thousand dollars was the rock bottom, and that if I didn’t take his price, he had other dealers lined up who would.”
“So you bit.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “In a minute. Do you happen to have a phone number or address for that couple in California? The ones who bought the table from you?”
“In the back,” she said. “But I’d prefer to call them myself.”
I sat in a dusty wing chair while she made the phone call.
When she’d finished, Liz Fuller poked her head around the door of her office. “They definitely haven’t sold the piece. They love it.”
“One of those tables is a very expensive fake,” I pointed out.
“God.” She groaned. “I should have stuck to Depression glass.”
“If it were me who’d been cheated like that,” I said slowly, “I’d be pissed. Really pissed.”
She lifted her chin. “What are you suggesting?”
“How pissed are you?”
Liz Fuller chewed her lower lip. “Very. I don’t enjoy being cheated. And I hate the idea that I might have accidentally cheated somebody else.”
I nodded agreement. “Would you be willing to tell somebody from the district attorney’s office about your transaction with Hargreaves?”
“I am not looking to get in a pissing match with somebody like Lewis Hargreaves.”
“It’ll be a royal pain in the ass,” I agreed.
“Who’d you say he sold the other table to?”
“She’s sort of a socialite, in Savannah. Hargreaves knew she’d be interested in the table, because she’s trying to raise money to buy Beaulieu for a museum. My friend paid fifteen thousand for her table.”
“The son of a bitch,” she said under her breath. “Guess he thought he’d pull one over on a couple of dumb dames.”
“How ’bout it, Liz? You feel like rattling Lewis Hargreaves’s cage?”
She straightened her shoulders and stood up. “Why not? What have I got to lose? I own this building, my husband’s got a great pension plan. And I don’t give a pee-diddly what Lewis Hargreaves thinks. Nobody messes with Liz Fuller.”