The Orkney Scroll

Chapter 3

Before I proceed with the tale, there are one or two facts you should know about Bjarni, germane to the subject at hand. First, Bjarni Haraldsson was a Viking. Please do not misunderstand me. Viking is not an ethnic term, despite the way we use it now. Some say it is derived from vik, the word for a “bay” or “cove.” I don’t agree. I believe it to be what we might call a job description. Ethnically, Bjarni was Norse. The word Viking refers to a specific activity, and that activity when you come right down to it was raiding. In other words, Vikings were pirates, and the term suited Bjarni and his friends rather well. Oh, they’d trade if it suited them. If not they just took what they needed. Every spring, when the weather was good and the sowing done, all able men headed out on raiding parties to see what they could find. Sometimes they went in autumn after the harvest as well. They had the fastest ships on the sea, light, with shallow drafts that allowed them to beach almost anywhere, and they were exceedingly adept sailors and fierce and skilled fighters. They came in fast, looted, burned, raped in increasingly violent attacks and then moved on. No wonder they were feared wherever they went. No wonder prayers rang out from pulpits across Europe asking that the faithful be saved from the Viking scourge.

The second salient point is that Bjarni was a pagan. While Earl Sigurd the Stout had converted to Christianity. Bjarni had not accepted the new faith. Wiser people than I have made the point that Christianity was not a natural fit for a Viking. Their code was different. Men fought together, raided together and their loyalty was to those with whom they fought, and to those who behaved in a way that merited it. Family was extraordinarily important. Blood ties were sacred for the Vikings. If you killed someone’s kin, the victim’s entire family was obliged, and to say nothing of inclined, to kill you. An eye for an eye was really the code of the Viking. Turning the other cheek wasn’t something a proud Viking was too likely to do, and the idea of the meek inheriting the earth would seem merely laughable. Still by Bjarni’s time, Christianity was being accepted all over the Viking world and under some duress in Orkney. Earl Sigurd converted only because Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, forced him to be baptized. It was either that or have his head cut off by Olaf. Sigurd had to promise that everyone on Orkney would be baptized. We don’t know whether Bjarni was baptized or not, but we do know that he clung obstinately to his belief in the old gods of northern Europe.

I suppose we would say now that Bjarni was something of a throwback, a relic of some earlier more violent time, when the earls of Orkney and their Norwegian kings dreamt of a Norse-Orcadian dominion throughout what is now the British Isles. Whether they knew it or not, those hopes died with Sigurd in Ireland at the Battle of Clontarf.

At the very least Bjarni was out of touch with his times. The world of a thousand years ago was rapidly changing. The Vikings were gradually settling down. For example, those in Northern France, the people we now know as Normans, were pretty firmly established. Other peoples were doing the same. The Magyars, those marauding horsemen who had terrorized much of Europe, were now settling peacefully in the area we know as Hungary. And monks, now finding it less necessary to protect their treasures from the heathen hordes, were flexing power, both spiritual and political. It was only in Britain that the Vikings still had the power to instill fear, and even there life was changing. While life on Orkney had for well over a hundred years been one last raid after another, and one battle after another, too, even Sigurd’s grandfather, the aptly named Thorfinn Skull-Splitter had managed to die of old age, rather than from his wounds. It was not just the old religion to which Bjarni clung, it was the old ways as well.

But to continue with his story: those sailing from Orkney usually waited for good conditions in the spring, but Bjarni was not in a position to time his exit to fair weather. He left in February, kissing his wife Frakokk and two sons good-bye, and promising to return. Neither he nor they had any idea what was in store for our Bjarni.

Three events of some significance occurred in rapid succession that night following the wake at the Stane. The first was that while I was dreaming about disembodied heads, Blair was officially charged with the murder of Trevor Wylie. The second was that sometime in the wee hours, perhaps while the police were congratulating themselves on a quick resolution to the murder, McClintoch Swain suffered another break-in. So, as it turned out, did Scot Free, Trevor’s shop, an event that was to annoy Detective Singh no end.

The third was that I had this little epiphany, somewhere around 3 AM. Even though I didn’t want to, I was replaying the business about the writing cabinet, a rather unpleasant habit I’d developed. I suppose it was better than dreaming about Trevor’s head, but it was exhausting nonetheless. I tried to picture the cabinet, going back over in my mind the examination, one I thought I had been careful about the first time I saw it in Trevor’s store. I imagined myself opening the doors, looking at the leaded glass and then the wood, the dovetailing, the finish, and then the lock. I was sure the lock was fine.

I then went back over my conversation with the elusive Percy, or Arthur, or whatever he was called. When I’d told him the cabinet was a fake, we’d got into one of those “Is, too; Is not” conversations. Clearly he had been convinced of the authenticity of his grandmother’s writing cabinet. But the piece of it I’d foolishly and painfully crawled through a hedge to get, said it wasn’t. Wrong lock, no doubt about it.

Then I went over in my mind the documentation I’d searched for on behalf of Anna Chan. There had been one lacquered mahogany cupboard, valued at $15,000, in the big shipment from Scotland, purchased from an antique dealer on George Square in Glasgow by the name of John A. Macdonald Sons. There had been a second shipment with only one object, a black cabinet valued at $10,000 from somewhere called St. Margaret’s Hope. Who could forget a name like that? So there were two black cabinets, and I’d had a difficult time deciding which would have been the one I’d seen in Trevor’s store. What if the cabinet Trevor had shown to Blair and me that fateful day had been a real Mackintosh? What if there was a second cabinet, a forgery? What if Blair had paid for the real one, but received the fake? I knew that was unlikely. Forging furniture is very difficult to do. Still, I had to wonder.

I called the police station expecting to leave a voice mail for Singh, but got the man himself. He sounded tired, but jubilant. He told me that Blair had been charged and that he appreciated my assistance. I told him I thought there were two cabinets.

“Isn’t that a little unlikely?” he asked. “I’ve been reading up on your man Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Never heard of him until now, but I see he’s famous. It sounds like a lot of work to forge a second desk thing.”

“Not if you can sell it twice,” I said.

“Interesting,” he said. “Bait and switch. But it doesn’t make any difference, does it? Wylie may have shown you and Baldwin the real deal, but he delivered the fake. That’s still a motive for murder. It may say something about Trevor’s ethics, but it doesn’t change the fact Baldwin took an axe to Trevor’s head. It doesn’t make any difference to the case.”

“It makes a difference to me,” I said.

“I can see that. Your credibility as an antique dealer is on the line, so it would be better for you if the one you saw was authentic.”

“Surely it does show that something else was going on here,” I said.

“I’ll tell you exactly what was going on, because it will be public information in the morning. Trevor Wylie had a gambling problem, by which I mean he couldn’t stop, and he owed almost eight hundred thousand to someone, who, when he couldn’t collect, sold the debt for fifty cents on the dollar to a guy who likes to intimidate his prey by showing up with his Doberman. That, you see, was why I was interested in your comment about the man with the dog. We’ll be having a little chat with this guy, whose name is Douglas Sykes, better known as Dog, as soon as we can find him, and I’m willing to bet Trevor paid him in cash, which is the only thing he accepts, just before he died. You understand how it works, right? Man with Doberman pays the original lender half, in other words four hundred grand, and then sets out to collect the full amount, which is how he makes his money. Wylie was about to get himself very badly hurt if he didn’t come up with the money, so he concocted this scheme to sell a fake Mackintosh to Baldwin, for cash, and presto, he’s out of trouble.”

“Maybe the man with the Doberman killed Trevor.”

“Not good for business. You rough them up to scare them, but you keep them alive so they can pay up and then rack up more debts.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But you don’t know this for a fact.”

“Guess nothing. Safe money says that’s the way it is. Thanks for calling me, though. Hold on a sec.”

I waited. He had put his hand over the mouthpiece, so all I could hear was a muffled conversation. “McClintoch and Swain in Yorkville,” he said finally. “That’s you, right?”

“Right.”

“Sorry to have to tell you you’ve had a break-in,” he said. “You might want to go over there now.” There was a pause. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Shit!”

“What?”

“Sorry,” he said. “It seems the perps hitting antique stores are at it again. Wylie’s shop has been broken into as well. Okay, I’m on my way.”

My partner Rob, who lives right next door and who spends a lot of time working nights, was pulling into his parking spot as I came out. When I told him what had happened, he very generously insisted on coming with me, even though he looked as if he could use some sleep.

The shop was in some disarray this time, rather different from the time before when it was left in perfect order except for the missing candlesticks. It hadn’t been trashed, though, I’ll say that. It’s just that every drawer, credenza, chest and cabinet in the place had been opened and left that way. The office had fared worse than that, with every drawer having been emptied.

Singh showed up as I was surveying the place. “What’s missing?” he said.

“I’m not sure. I don’t see anything. We’ll have to do an inventory tomorrow.”

“We’ll dust for prints,” he sighed. “Here and at Wylie’s. If it makes you feel any better, his place looks worse. Fortunately, Anna Chan took the files with her when she left yesterday. I suppose you’re going to tell me that it was Percy looking for his grandmother’s chest.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think he’d be looking in an armoire for a writing cabinet. But somebody was certainly looking for something.”

“Money,” he said. “Did they get any?”

“I don’t think it was money. There’s only the petty cash, and the box hasn’t even been opened. The lock wouldn’t hold up to much prying, either.”

I saw Rob looking around. “Someone was looking for something very specific,” he said. “How did they get in?”

“No visible signs of entry,” Singh replied.

“So someone with a key?” I said. “I don’t think so. There’s just Clive, Alex, Ben, our student, and me. I’d vouch for all of us. In any event, anyone with a key would know the combination to the security system.”

“How fast did the security company respond?”

“We were here in about six minutes,” Singh said. “I don’t know how long they waited to call us.”

“A lot of activity here for six minutes,” Rob said.

“What are you saying?” I said.

“Either you could use a new security company or someone was hiding in the store when it closed.”

“You mean the alarm went off when they left?”

“Maybe. Let’s go home,” Rob said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

“I’d better call Clive and warn him,” I said.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d cast your eyes over Wylie’s place later, let me know if you think anything’s missing,” Singh said. “Say ten o’clock, so I can go home and have a shower.

“Sure,” I said.

The sun was just coming up when we got home, so I made breakfast for Rob. It was the least I could do. I told him my thoughts on the writing cabinet. He was very nice about it, but I knew he thought it completely unlikely. He told me I should forget the whole business and just get on with my life.

“Does Blair’s arrest not look a little too pat to you?” I asked Rob. “I mean, Blair uses an axe in front of dozens of people, including the chief of police, and then uses the same axe on Trevor? Did he think no one would remember the axe business? He’s smarter than that.”

“You’re assuming it was premeditated,” Rob said. “Maybe he went to the store to get his money back, and Trevor refused to give it to him.”

“He went to the store with an axe?” I said.

“I guess that’s why he’s charged with murder,” he said. “Maybe he just intended to scare him, and Trevor was his usual cocky self.”

“Blair’s a lawyer,” I said. “He’s gotten some pretty sleazy people off.”

“You can say that again,” Rob said. “Some of them were guilty as sin.”

“Maybe one of these sleazy types had a grudge against him and framed him for it.”

“Or maybe one of the sleazy people did the job for him,” Rob replied. “Some of them at least must feel they owe him big time.”

“The police can’t find any record of a check or credit card transaction,” I said. “I mean they can’t even prove that Blair paid for the thing. There’s that business about Trevor owing eight hundred thousand dollars to his bookie, of course. I get the impression the police think Trevor rook cash and paid off the debt.”

“Eight hundred thousand in cash?” Rob said. “Then Blair has more problems than a murder charge.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nice law-abiding people like you and me don’t have that much cash around,” he said.

“But he’s very rich.”

“If he came into your store and offered you, say, a hundred grand for something, would you accept payment in cash?”

“No,” I said. “I know that significant sums of money like that have to be reported.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“But Trevor needed cash to pay his gambling debts. Maybe he gave Blair the deal of a lifetime, at least what would have qualified as that if the cabinet had been genuine Mackintosh. It’s worth a lot more than eight hundred thousand. Blair would think it was a really great deal and pay the cash.”

“Think this through, Lara. Honest people do not keep that kind of cash around. Have you ever thought how much space that kind of money takes up? Let’s say it’s in fifties, hundreds being hard to spend sometimes. So each bundle of one hundred bills is five thousand dollars. You’d need one hundred and sixty bundles of fifties. Four hundred if it’s in twenties, which most people want. You don’t just throw that in a shopping bag and take it to your favorite antique dealer, now do you? Good deal or not, Blair had money he shouldn’t have.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he must have had a reason to have so much cash on hand, and it would tend to be an illegal one.” Rob should know, of course. Right at this moment he was running a restaurant. He knows nothing about the restaurant business. He does know about money laundering, however, and that was what he was doing, hoping, of course, to catch some bad guys doing it. He tells me he is making pots of money by laundering illicit cash, but that he still hasn’t nailed down what he calls the substantive offense, the crime, in other words, that resulted in all this money that needs to be laundered. He was given this assignment because he’s of Ukrainian descent, and apparently there were some Ukrainians in town who were interested in doing business of this sort. What do I know? I was just not entirely happy he had to consort with people like this, who in my opinion probably would kill you if you looked at them wrong. Still I was not prepared to concede the point.

“He’s a lawyer,” I said.

“And your point is?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he has an aversion to paying income tax. Singh seems to think I’d accept cash so I wouldn’t have to declare it. Maybe Blair does that. I just think it’s all too pat. Blair has a temper, certainly, but I just don’t see him as a murderer.”

“That may be because you don’t want to.”

“Isn’t it time you got some sleep?” I said.

“Sorry, I’m coming down hard on you, aren’t I? Baldwin was the defense lawyer in a case that I worked on. I know the guy was guilty, and Blair got him off, and believe me, our streets are more dangerous as a result. I’m accusing you of bias, and I should be pointing the finger at myself.”

“I’m just in a bad mood because I missed the lock,” I said. “And for sure I’m sympathetic about how you feel about all the slime Blair got off. But you know somebody has to defend them. That’s the way our system works, even if it’s galling from time to time. Furthermore, Blair told me once about how he grew up poor, and when he wanted to go to university his grandfather took a bundle of cash out from under the mattress and gave it to him. Don’t roll your eyes! I know rags to riches is a cliche. His grandfather’s wad of cash paid for his first year of university and he was able to take it from there. His grandfather believed in cash, and maybe Blair does, too. Okay, so he has more cash than other people. I understand what you’re saying, but just having it does not make you a criminal. Surely it’s what you do with it that counts.”

“Where I come from it’s ”not only what you do with it, but where you got it in the first place,“ he said. ”But I take your point. I can’t assume because he gets slugs off he’s a slug himself. Nor can I assume that because he has cash, he was doing something illegal, or that he sank an axe into Trevor’s head. I stand corrected, or at least moderately chastised.“

“Thank you. I appreciate that concession. Now, you get some sleep, and I’ll go to the shop, and maybe we’ll have an early dinner before you head out to catch bad guys.”

“Great idea. Promise we won’t discuss Baldwin, Wylie or locks, okay?” he said.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I still think there were two writing cabinets, though.”

“Call Ben and ask him if there was a chance someone hid out in the shop,” he said. “That idea I’m sticking to.” So I did. Ben told me that he had been in the office just before closing when he heard the bell that rings when someone enters or exits, but when he went out there was no one there. He said he looked in both showrooms but saw no one, and assumed that someone had looked in and then left right away. He was devastated to think he might have missed a thief, but I told him it could have happened to any of us. I told him I didn’t think anything much had been taken, and that was to prove correct.

Singh was right about Trevor’s shop. It really was a mess. Furniture had been overturned, drawers pulled out of everything. The place essentially had been trashed. Singh and I just stood in the middle of the chaos and looked around.

“I don’t think I can tell you much of anything in this mess,” I said. “There may be stuff missing, but I’m not sure I could say.”

“I can understand that,” he said. “And I guess it doesn’t matter that much with Wylie dead. He won’t be complaining, will he?”

“Does this look like a different thief to you?” I said.

“Hate to think we have two of them,” he said. “But yes, it does.”

“I’m glad mine was neater,” I said. “And you’re right, it’s a good thing the records were removed yesterday or it would be days before we got them straightened out.”

“I know it’s a long shot,” Singh said, “but have a look around.”

As I did so, a piece of paper caught my eye. It was facedown in the middle of the room, but it looked like a check. I picked it up, took one look, and handed it to Singh.

“Tell me again about how Trevor used the money Blair gave him to pay off the guy with the dog, or rather the man called Dog,” I said. The piece of paper in question was a check, dated the day I’d gone to the store with Blair, payable to Scot Free Antiques and signed by Blair, for eight hundred thousand dollars. It was not the first time I’d thought that Trevor had chosen a very stupid name for his store, unless, of course, he planned to give away antiques, but this was not the issue right at this moment.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Singh said. It was beginning to sound like his mantra.

“It does sort of take the edge off the motive,” I said. “If Trevor hadn’t cashed this yet, then why would Blair kill him?”

“He killed him,” Singh said, simply as he pulled out a plastic bag and put the check into it. “Don’t know how we missed this the first time.”

“I expect Trevor hid it somewhere until he could take it to the bank, except that he didn’t get there. It just got dislodged, wherever it was, in the break-in.”

“How long would you hold on to a check like this? It doesn’t do much for your theory that there were two of these desks, either,” Singh said.

“You’re just bitter.” I could hardly wait to rush home and tell Rob that he’d been completely wrong about Blair having illicit cash hanging about in huge piles, and that he had misjudged the man, as had Singh. My small moment of righteous indignation did not last long, however. Despite what I’d thought, the check made Blair look even guiltier, if that was possible. It turned out the check number was out of sequence: in other words, after Trevor was dead and Blair under suspicion, Blair had signed a check and backdated it to the day he’d purchased the cabinet. The two checks with numbers immediately before it were dated after Trevor died. It looked as if Blair had arranged to have someone break into Trevor’s shop and leave it there in a faked robbery. If so, it had been really dumb of Blair not to think about the numbers on the checks, although he claimed, according to Singh, that he had postdated a couple of checks that he was sending through the mail. The trouble with that one was that when the police went through the recycling bin of one of the check recipients, they found the envelope, postmarked after Trevor had died. It seemed incredibly inept for a man of Blair’s obvious intelligence, but once again the police were back to having no record of the transaction.

Anna Chan, who continued to phone me from time to time with questions about Trevor’s paperwork, told me they’d caught the man who’d trashed Trevor’s place, although not mine, I’m afraid. His name was Woody somebody or other, some lowlife Blair had successfully represented on a charge of a particularly vicious house invasion. Apparently Woody’s gratitude extended to planting the check at Blair’s request, but not as far as lying about it when caught. It seemed pretty open-and-shut, as they say, at this point, and a rather inept attempt to subvert the course of justice on Blair’s part.

Percy never showed up again, not even at The Dwarfie Stane. Rendall had promised he’d call me if he did. It was as if he’d never existed.

I tried just to get on with life, to forget it, but that was very hard to do. For one thing Blair’s journey through the justice system was very big news, and every court appearance, however brief, filled the newspapers with lurid headlines about the Skull-Splitter killer, and much was made of there having been a dispute over a piece of furniture. Stan-field Roberts, the curator at the Cottingham who’d been at Blair’s ill-fated party, was quoted about unscrupulous antique dealers. Fortunately my name didn’t come into it, but that didn’t make me feel any better, as my role, however anonymous in the whole sordid business, continued to rankle. I alternated between being sure I’d been right about the cabinet and being completely down on myself for my ineptitude. It had to be that I was so besotted by either the cabinet or by Blair’s money or Trevor’s charm that I missed something as obvious as the lock. At my age!

My self-flagellation on the subject of the lock was made worse by my conviction that Blair was not the murderer. It was, as I kept saying to anyone who would listen, just too pat. I also clung to the notion that the saga of the two cabinets was crucial to my understanding of what had really happened. There was absolutely no concrete support of any kind for this feeling of mine, which just made me more upset.

Various people continued to try to cheer me up; the rest avoided me. I could hardly blame them. I was rather tiresome on the subject. Mention locks, for example, or even a word that rhymed with it, like shock, or bring up the subject of Scotland, or furniture, something it’s easy enough to do when you’re an antique dealer, or heaven forbid, utter the word forgery, and I was off on a little tirade. I did mention to Clive and Moira that I thought there might have been two cabinets, and while they seemed enthusiastic, I knew they really thought I was just rationalizing my mistake, and I only felt worse. Clive went on being nice to me, a situation I found intolerable. Moira tried a lecture or two. “Self worth is not measured by how many antiques you identify correctly,” she intoned. I didn’t retort that lack of self worth might be measured in the number of times you’d got something so wrong another person had been killed because of it, but that was what I was thinking.

What surprised me was that all of this didn’t affect our business adversely. In fact, business had rarely been better. That was almost entirely due to Desmond Crane, who may or may not have been in competition with Blair for the writing cabinet. Shortly after Blair was charged, Dez, who had never been a customer in the same league as Blair, although he did buy from us occasionally, came into the shop, had a look around, and then asked me if I would consider decorating his daughter Tiffany’s condo.

“I bought her a little place as a graduation present,” he said. By little, I was soon to learn, he meant about two thousand square feet, which is bigger than my house. “She loves antiques, unlike my son who won’t look at anything designed before the year 2000,” he said. “And she has absolutely no furniture, because she lived at home during her years at university. Will you come and have a look?”

“I’d love to, Mr. Crane,” I replied. “But you do know I was involved in that business with Blair and Trevor Wylie?”

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” he said. “And please call me Dez.” I suppose he could afford to be magnanimous, given that his chief rival for all those high profile and lucrative court cases was out of commission. “Let’s make an appointment to meet at the condo. It’s a surprise. She’ll be back from her summer job in about four weeks. Can you do it?”

Of course I could. It was a huge success, too. It was actually Clive who did most of the work. I find the antiques, but he’s the designer. Tiffany had inherited her grandmother’s china, which her mother, Leanna the Lush, said Tiffany loved, and Clive picked up the colors in that for the walls and the accents. We ransacked our showrooms and warehouse for furniture and carpets, silverware, art for the walls. What we didn’t have, I went to auctions and found. Clive and I were both there when Dez and Leanna, who reeked of stale booze, brought Tiffany over, and after she commented on what a smashing place it was, we handed her the keys. Tiffany cried, Dez and Leanna cried, and I could have cried, but with relief, too. Even Tiffany’s brother Carter—Clive maintains that Carter’s real name is Cartier and that he and his sister are named for their parents’ favorite places to shop—asked me if I thought he could mix a few antique pieces with his modern furniture. When I said yes, he came over to the store and bought a huge armoire for his stereo system and another for his kitchen. Soon people Dez had referred to us started buying stuff, too.

“There is one small problem with all this business Dez has sent our way,” Clive said.

“We have no merchandise?” I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “This is a nice problem to have, I know, but we aren’t going to have stock for the Christmas season, which is not good at all. How will we take advantage of that ridiculous time of year when everyone waits until the last minute to shop and is therefore forced to spend obscene amounts of money at McClintoch and Swain if we don’t have anything to sell? We’re okay on the Asian stuff, but Crane and his friends and relatives have almost cleaned out our European collection. I’ve been over to the warehouse, and it’s practically empty.”

“Relax. It’s only August,” I said. “I’ll e-mail our pickers and agents in Europe and head over there next week, assuming, that is, that Detective Singh will let me go. If I do it right away, there’ll be plenty of time to get it here.”

“It’s too bad you have to make an extra trip,” he said. “I know you did double-duty here while Moira was having chemo.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ll e-mail our people in Italy and France, and maybe Ireland, and see what they can come up with on short notice. I’ll head out as soon as I hear back.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Lara,” Clive said. “I thought we were doomed, but you’ve pulled it out of the bag.

“Mmm,” I said. The truth was that while I was publicly rehabilitated, privately I still felt like dirt. A week or two far away from home seemed like a very good idea to me.

That might have been the end of it, had I not become better acquainted with Willow Laurier, Trevor’s last girlfriend. We’d been introduced at Blair Bazillionaire’s ill-fated cocktail party, and I’d seen her briefly at Trevor’s funeral, but we’d not exchanged more than a few words. Still, I knew her well enough to know that it was she who was sneaking into the alley beside Trevor’s former store at about one in the morning one warm August night.

I’d been working very late trying to get everything organized for my trip to Europe and was locking up and heading for my car when I saw her. She wasn’t good at stealth, obviously, because she stood under a street light for a minute or two looking up and down the street in a rather furtive fashion, before darting into the alley. A few minutes later a dim light, most likely a flashlight given the way it moved through the shop, glowed in the window.

There was only one way out, really, either through the back alley which led nowhere but out to the street again, or the front door which deposited you right on the street. I found myself a perch on a stone wall across the road and waited.

At least twenty minutes passed, and Willow had not yet appeared. Worse yet, the roving light was gone. My imagination, already inclined to the macabre where that store was concerned, started working overtime. What if Willow had fallen in the darkness, was lying there, and would be until the landlord showed up, heaven knows when. Or, and this was a really unpleasant thought, a murderer had been waiting there for her. That was ridiculous, I knew. Blair Bazillionaire had not been granted bail, given the horrendous nature of the murder and the fact that with all his money, he was considered a flight risk. Still I wasn’t convinced Blair had done it, so maybe, improbable though it might be, the real axe murderer had returned to the scene of the crime at the very moment Willow decided to enter it. I did not want to go into the store at night, or any time for that matter. But after almost half an hour, Willow still hadn’t shown up.

Very reluctantly, I went down the alley and tried the back door. It was unlocked, which seemed rather careless of her. I hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds, slid my hand along the wall in a vain attempt to find a light switch. By now my eyes were adjusting. There was some street light filtering through the front window, and much to my regret, a light in the basement, which probably explained why I couldn’t see it from the street. Fighting back nausea, to say nothing of terror, I went to the top of the stairs.

“Willow?” I said. “It’s Lara McClintoch.” There was no sound. “Willow?” I said again. Still no reply. There was nothing for it: I was going to have to go down.

She was standing in the back room where I’d found Trevor’s body, and she was crying. “Leave me alone,” she sobbed.

“Willow,” I said. “I am not going to leave you alone. You shouldn’t be here. First of all, it’s illegal, and furthermore, it is not nice down here. You really have to come upstairs. I’m going to take you for a coffee, or maybe something a little stronger.”

“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “Even behind the furnace. I’ve looked for signs the floor has been dug up and new floor put down. I’ve looked in every piece of furniture upstairs. I even looked to see if it would be possible to hide stuff in these pipes.”

“Willow,” I said. “What are you looking for?”

“I thought he loved me,” she burbled on as if I didn’t exist. “He said he did.”

“I’m sure in his way he did,” I said in a soothing tone.

“Don’t patronize me,” she said, turning on me. “I know he was a first-class jerk. What I really want to know is where did he put the money?”

“The money?”

“Look,” she said. “You may think I’m naive, but I’m not. I’m not overcome with grief, either. Even if I might have been, I found his packed suitcase and in it the airline ticket: an around-the-world ticket. You know what those things cost? Thousands! Almost exactly what I lent him a week before he died. I know he was planning to make a run for it. He’d only booked the first leg of it, to Orkney via Glasgow, and after that, parts unknown.”

“A fugitive, you mean?” I said.

“Exactly right,” she replied. “So where, I ask you, is the money? He made a big score, didn’t he, with that fake desk thing? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? So where is it?”

“The police say he was a compulsive and unlucky gambler. They think he paid off his debts to a bookie with it.”

“I guess that’s what they meant with all their questions about what Trevor did in his spare time, is it? I knew he played the horses, and he sometimes went to a casino. I went with him a couple of times. I liked the shows. But there had to be more. He was heading out, but not with me. I knew there was something going on, but I never thought he’d run out on me.”

“Maybe he was going to ask you to come with him?”

“There was only one airline ticket,” she said. “He was leaving me.”

“Perhaps he thought, given his gambling problem, that he should do you a favor?”

“There you go again, patronizing me,” she said. “He was a rat.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. He pulled the wool over my eyes, too, in a different way of course.”

“He convinced you it was the real deal?” she said. “That desk thing?”

“Writing cabinet,” I said. “Why does everybody have so much trouble with the name? Come on, let’s get out of here. The police have been all through the place. There is no stash of cash here.”

“If it is, I can’t find it,” she said. “But if not here, where?”

“I’m trying to tell you there may not be any.”

“There is,” she insisted.

“Look, Blair Baldwin claims to have paid eight hundred thousand dollars for the writing cabinet. The police say that’s pretty much what Trevor owed his bookie. He took the cash, paid the bookie, and that’s it. If he was leaving, he was leaving broke.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “We only have Baldwin’s word for the eight hundred thousand. What if he paid more than that? A lot more than that?”

“Possible,” I said.

“Exactly. That thing, the writing cabinet, was worth more than eight hundred grand, wasn’t it? I mean if it had been real?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s the rest of the money?”

“But Baldwin said…”

“He’s an axe murderer,” she interrupted. “Why would we believe him?”

“Good point. We don’t know he’s the murderer for sure, and I rather think maybe he isn’t. However, I’ve been thinking… Could we discuss this upstairs? This place is creeping me out. In fact, could we discuss this at the all-night coffee shop down the street?”

“What have you been thinking?”

“I’ll tell you when we are out of here. How did you get in?”

“Key,” she said. “If it weren’t for that yellow police stuff across the door, it would almost be legal.”

“Almost,” I agreed, as we locked up the store and headed back to the street.

With a couple of decaf cappuccinos in front of us, we went back to our chat. “I’ve had the feeling, and I may be rationalizing, that there were two writing cabinets,” I said.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“There was a real Mackintosh writing cabinet, shown to me and to Baldwin. And there was another one, a forgery that was delivered to Baldwin, the one he chopped up at the party.”

“So we’re looking not for money, but for a second writing cabinet?” she said. “I’m still not getting this.”

“Maybe Trevor sold the Mackintosh twice,” I said. “Maybe he showed the real one to two different people, sold it to both of them, and shipped the fake to Baldwin, and the real one to someone else.”

“Like who?” she said.

“I don’t know. I realize thinking that there is someone out there forging Charles Rennie Mackintosh furniture is a little far-fetched, but no more so than a huge amount of cash hidden in the basement.” The person who was most likely to have the cabinet was, of course, Desmond Crane. I’d been to Crane’s home several times lately and hadn’t seen it, but then it would be rather foolish of him to have it on display while I was present.

“And the reason you think there were two is?”

“Percy was convinced it was real. I’m not the only one who thought so.”

“Who is Percy?”

“Percy’s grandmother once owned the cabinet. Percy or Arthur, that is.”

“Who is Arthur?”

“He’s Percy. He told me his name was Percy and he told Rendall at the Stane his name was Arthur.”

“Two different names? He sounds about as reliable as an axe murderer,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be difficult to make an exact copy? Wouldn’t you have to completely dismantle the original in order to do so?”

“Very difficult, but a lot easier if you had the complete drawings and specifications, which Trevor did, and if you’d seen the original, also possible in this case. That and a few photographs, and some paint chips that matched and you’d be away. The color wouldn’t have to be absolutely exact anyway, because you would never see the two pieces together.”

“I knew it!” she said. “There is money somewhere. Lots of it.”

“It isn’t in the shop. As my partner the RCMP officer has pointed out, that kind of cash takes up a fair amount of space. And for sure it isn’t in Trevor’s bank account. I think it was irresponsible of him to not have a will, but I know the landlord, and he’s told me he is going to auction off Trevor’s merchandise for back payment of rent as soon as the police and the courts will let him.”

“I lent Trevor rent money from time to time,” she said. “Quite often, now that I think about it. The creep owes me quite a fair chunk of cash, and I’d like it back. No chance of that, I guess. I have no record of it. I mean we practically lived together. Why would I ask him for a receipt? I tried approaching the lawyer the court appointed, but it doesn’t look good. He went on about when people die without a will, the money would go first to a spouse, and if there isn’t one, and I guess I don’t qualify, then they look down first, by which I think he meant children, then up to parents, and then out almost indefinitely to relatives, you know siblings, then cousins.”

“Did Trevor have siblings or close relatives?”

“He’s never mentioned any, but they’ll probably come up with somebody. Still, I figured I was played for a fool, and at the very least, I’d like my money back. I suppose I could plead my case with whomever they find out there to give the money to. I mean you never know: unlikely as it is, I might find a decent human being. That would make them quite unlike Trevor. So I’m thinking if I find the money it would make my life simpler.”

“If you found the money, you’d have to turn it over to the police,” I said.

“I know, but it might be about ten thousand short when I did,” she said. “I was saving that money for a down payment on a house. You probably think that’s terrible of me to even contemplate keeping some of it.”

“No. If I could find some way of salvaging my reputation as an antique dealer at the expense of Trevor, I’d do it in a flash.”

She smiled at last. “He had a way with women, didn’t he? I thought he looked and sounded a little like Sean Connery.”

“I did, too. I think that’s why I let him get away with stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Stealing good customers right from under my nose.”

“Do you have a card?” she asked. “I’d like to stay in touch if I may.”

“Of course. Give me yours as well. Is your name really Willow by the way?”

“Yes, it is. I don’t have a card,” she said. “I’m a dental hygienist. You don’t need a card for that. But I’ll give you my number. I’m thinking we might collaborate.”

“On what?”

“Salvaging your reputation and recovering my cash. I figure there would have to be at least a reward for its return, don’t you? Where do we start?”

“I wouldn’t mind a chance to visit Scotland, to go to John A. Macdonald Antiques on George Square in Glasgow and see what they have to say for themselves. Maybe even go to Orkney. You can’t generalize, of course, but if a piece of furniture is forged, it does tend to have been in the country of origin of the authentic piece. I’ll be in the general area anyway, so maybe I’ll just pop up there and talk to them.”

The tiny part of my rational brain that was still functioning, the part that had been banished to a position floating somewhere near the unpleasantly bright neon light fixture in that coffee shop, looked down on two sadly deluded, if not delusional, women and wept.