Scarlet Fever

CHAPTER 16

March 12, 2019 Tuesday

Switching the light on, Kathleen Sixt Dunbar looked around the shop. A large grandfather clock stood against one wall. Furniture from the eighteenth century glowed. She could smell the lemon polish. Fair to good paintings adorned the walls but all paintings dated at least to the late 1700s or early 1800s, with a few odd pieces of tapestry earlier than that. Those clocks on the wall also reflected the period…banjo clocks, more modest clocks, the pendulums still swinging. Harry had paid attention to such things.

Kathleen listened to the ticking, knowing she should wind those clocks, but first she needed to take in this elegant shop. The heat had not been turned off. The interior proved cozy.

A small room off the main showroom contained a simple farmer’s table, which Harry had used as a desk. At a right angle to it, in front, two comfortable chairs seemed poised for a transaction. All the sitter would need to do was hand across a check.

Along the wall behind the desk, a large computer screen reposed. All was organized and quite clean.

Sitting behind the desk, a file cabinet by her right side, Kathleen opened the top drawer, pulling out a folder. Bills. Electric had been paid. All was in order.

Then she pulled out a folder containing invoices. Again, all was in order. A few bills remained outstanding.

The bottom drawer of the file cabinet reminded her of how smart Harry was. Folder after folder, organized by decade, contained names, addresses, and often photos of furniture, paintings, ephemera of value. These pieces, still in possession of the owners, of old estates in some instances, interested Harry. Some, like a sideboard from 1730, cherrywood, not usual for sideboard wood, caught her eye. No price or valuation had been written on any of the folders she glanced through. Again, this reminded her of how smart Harry had been. Values change, sometimes dramatically.

She would study those folders assiduously in time. On some, in the upper right-hand corner was written the name of the hunt club to which the owners belonged. Other notations included museum affiliations, opera organizations, and the like. Quite a few noted supporters of local animal shelters as well as the names of their pets and horses. She smiled, for some of these folders, carefully updated, had lists of animals going back to the early 1990s, with today’s much-alive animals noted as well as their favorite treats.

Her curiosity peaked when she found a folder of what she considered ephemera, although technically it was not. This contained photos and accurate descriptions of jewelry, especially hunting-themed jewelry.

The only jewelry in the shop was a slender stock tiepin. A model in evening scarlet stood against the wall. The pin did not pierce a stock tie, since evening scarlet was actually white tie, but rather it had been pinned to the left sleeve. The only reason Kathleen could come up with for this oddity was that Harry didn’t want to lose it and perhaps forgot it.

The two pieces that most pleased her were the Louis XV desk against one wall, a soft overhead light bathing it, revealing the richness of the colors, and a stunning Louis XVI ebony cabinet with a green marble top, the two drawer handles golden heads of an unidentified demigod with a mass of curls on his head and beard.

Left to her own devices Kathleen would have specialized in French furniture from Louis XIII to the unfortunate Louis XVI. However, central Virginia was not the best place for such treasures. A few good pieces would be sold but Harry knew his people and his people reveled in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, English. Was there a Virginian alive who could refuse anything Georgian or even Federalist?

Driving from the airport yesterday, she was again reminded of how steadfast the state was in its devotion to its own history. Outsiders focused on the politics and the battles. Insiders focused on what she called the living arts. And Virginians knew how to live.

If Harry could have put an Audubon on the wall he would have been in his glory. However, he had some good Alfred de Dreux, a French painter born in 1810 who did quite nicely by horses. As for Stubbs, well, Harry could and did dream, but his focus had to be furniture because when you specialized in painting you ran up against museums constantly and their budgets could overwhelm most private citizens’. That left him furniture and some clocks. Again, a stunning and rare piece could find one up against The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but usually he could find those mid-range very good pieces that he could afford and so could his market.

The trick was getting the furniture before an estate sale. Harry was a master at it.

Harry and Kathleen had married right out of William and Mary in 1987, dreaming there as Harry began working at Williamsburg in the carpentry shop, where visitors could watch items being made. This proved better instruction than anything he soaked up at William and Mary, great university though it is. The hands-on experience added to his already sharp eye. For one thing, he could spot a fake quickly, having spent so much time creating accurate reproductions. The fakes usually took shortcuts. Once in business, he started with accurate reproductions because people could afford them. By that time they were separated, the marriage having lasted a desultory six months.

In 1987 when they got married, they had made a will. Kathleen didn’t think about it after the divide. She wanted to get out of Virginia, flee the eighteenth century, so she went west, young woman. Oklahoma City beckoned. She opened her own store, a little flower shop that grew. They never divorced officially. Occasionally, they would talk. Sometimes a few years would go by. She did not mention him to her circle of friends in Oklahoma City nor did he mention her to his friends.

On February 27, she had received a call from April Fletcher. Years ago Harry had moved his estate planning to another foxhunter, specializing in same. April was bold in the hunt field, prudent and insightful off of it. They worked well together. Not only did Harry not change his heir, Kathleen, he willed the business to her and the building that housed it, a stone two-story structure with gable windows, which also housed him. Harry literally lived over the shop.

When he passed, April notified Kathleen immediately. Harry’s wife didn’t pretend sorrow but she was shocked. Harry, a vital man, would live for decades, so she and everyone thought. Kathleen asked April to check in on the shop, see to security, and hire someone to clean the upstairs. Harry was fastidious but the refrigerator, etc., would need cleaning.

She then informed the ultra-capable lawyer that she would be taking over the business. She needed a bit of time to sell or rent her own shop but she would be there as soon as possible.

Oklahoma City, being on the rise, meant Kathleen need not wait long. Her business, successful…she had the contract for special events at American Express and other corporations…sold in three days. Even she was stunned. The buyer, a young woman, ambitious, who worked for Kathleen, lost no time putting together investors and, boom, Mrs. Dunbar was enriched and freed. She also sold her house with all the furnishings within ten days. Granted, that would take some time to close but it was a cash offer.

Clearly, some people did not need banks in Oklahoma City.

She packed up her Welsh terrier, Abdul, flew to Charlottesville, and picked up the keys to Harry’s car and shop from April, who offered to escort her but Kathleen politely declined.

When she opened the door to the upstairs, which she did before going downstairs, she knew she had made the right decision. Harry’s living quarters reflected his eye for color, value, and comfort. All she needed were her own clothes, which she had brought. A few odds and ends were being shipped. The paintings on the walls, mostly sporting art, harmonized with the Sheratons, one Hepplewhite credenza. She didn’t know if they were accurate reproductions or originals but when she had time to study his papers, she would. In the front hall, his crop, silver collars, hung over the corner of a Ben Marshall painting. His hunt gear, brushed, was inside the front hall closet. She noticed his frock coat was torn, the seams worn.

“Hard riding,” she thought, then said to Abdul, her Welsh terrier, “We’re home.”

Home was wherever Kathleen was, so the jaunty fellow was happy.

She wandered through the shop then she sat at the desk perhaps an hour after unpacking personal items upstairs.

At fifty-four, a few vagrant thoughts about age had crossed Kathleen’s mind, starting really when she turned fifty. Forty had flown by. She noticed only because her friends teased her, but fifty stuck. Here she was fifty-four, having a nest egg from her own efforts augmented by the estate of a shrewd absent husband. In short, Kathleen was rich.

Placing the folders back in the file cabinet, she resisted the urge to turn on the big computer. Lots of time for that, which she assumed would be full of furniture pictures as well as auctions at the various American and European auction houses.

Walking into the showroom, she sat down on the large sofa, a fireplace directly across from it, a pile of hardwood neatly stacked to the side. Once secure here she would make certain that fireplace glowed on cold days, a welcoming sight and smell.

She would carry on.

Furious as she was when she had walked out of the marriage, young as she was at twenty-two, she realized Harry had hit on the perfect formula for what would become his business. Woo older women. Become friends with them. Talk to them about what interested them. Which is why so many people thought Harry was gay. He was not. He was finding out everything about their furniture, their paintings, and even their expensive ceramic vases from the 1700s. Sometimes he would sleep with them, a discreet affair. That’s what had set her off. He had slept with another woman not two months after they were married.

“It didn’t mean anything, Kathleen.”

“It does to me.”

And that was the sum of it. She eventually got over it. He clearly continued on his quietly effective path. So far as she knew he never got caught.

A knock at the door alerted Abdul, who barked.

Kathleen rose, walking to the door.

She opened it to face a tall, at least six foot, woman with gorgeous silver hair and a fit body. This was an imposing figure until she smiled and held out her hand; in the other she held a large gardenia bush in a pot.

“Forgive me for coming unannounced. I’m Jane Arnold, the master of Jefferson Hunt. Harry was a stalwart and adored member.”

“Please come in.” Kathleen looked at the pot.

This was a good healthy gardenia, which Sister handed to her. “Welcome.”

Kathleen took the pot while Abdul sniffed Sister.

The two women walked to the sofa, where Kathleen placed the pot on the table, motioned for Sister to sit in a wing chair.

“Again, forgive me. I had no number for you but I do want you to know you are welcome. Like it or not, you have inherited many of Harry’s friends as well as this beautiful shop.”

“Thank you. How did you find out about me?”

“I didn’t exactly. Harry’s death was announced on February 27 in the news. Nothing more was heard about it, no service. Well, we all waited, as such details fall to next of kin. There seemed to be no next of kin. Most of us do use April Fletcher as our lawyer but I did not trouble her. She is very closemouthed but she did tell my treasurer, one of the world’s nosiest men, that Harry had an heir and that individual would be taking care of a funeral if there was one. Well, Ronnie Haslip, the treasurer, kept digging, and how he found out about you I don’t know, because I do know April didn’t tell him. Then the tiniest obituary appeared in the local paper, only giving his birth and death dates with a line that he left a wife and that details of a service would be forthcoming.”

“Ronnie should be a reporter.”

“In his own way he is. I call him the Town Crier.”

They both laughed.

Abdul left Kathleen to come over and lick Sister’s hand.

“Abdul,” Kathleen reprimanded him.

“I’m surrounded by hounds and two worthless house dogs. He’s a handsome fellow.”

“Welsh, of course. A Welsh Muslim.”

At that both women laughed again and Sister warmed to Kathleen and vice versa.

“You might be needing firewood for the shop and upstairs. My gentleman friend and his brother will bring some by.”

“Oh, don’t, you needn’t do that.”

“It’s not a bit of trouble. I have a decent-sized farm and trees come down. Nights stay cold here sometimes until early May.”

“I went to school at William and Mary.”

“Ah, you know.”

“It’s where I met Harry. I know it’s a surprise, that I’m a surprise. We married right after graduation and it was a mistake. We found our way to a friendship but never divorced. Being legally married, quietly or not, is a form of protection.”

“It can be,” Sister agreed. “Let me give you my card. Don’t hesitate to call. I do mean it. You have a lot on your hands.”

And Kathleen did, although neither woman could have known that meant murder.