“I work for Zoe’s lawyer. The insurance company will send its own person. Did you know Mr. Firth in Florida?”
Regina bristled. “How would I have known him in Florida? I’ve never been there in my life. We met here, in Summit, last year when he hired me to run the store.”
She rose abruptly. “Since you’re not from the fire department or the insurance company, we have nothing further to discuss.”
Eric ghosted into the doorway, a crooked grin on his face and a razor knife in his hand. “You need help leaving, pal?” Stuffed up with his cold, he sounded as threatening as Daffy Duck.
“I’ll see myself out, thank you.” McLean left casually, one eye trained on Eric, reflected in a front window. Eric, watching him watch, took a one-step lunge like a child teasing a chained dog. McLean stiffened but didn’t quicken his pace out to the truck.
He ransomed the developed photographs, then headed for the opposite side of town to meet Juanita Lopez, Tom’s wife. Her living room, like Regina’s, overflowed with a variety of furniture styles. Nothing was less than a century old and McLean’s involuntary reaction was always to stand in the center of the room, touching nothing.
She smiled at his discomfort, then sat down at a cherrywood table that had probably cost Tom several weeks’ profit from his garage. “Sit down, P. J., and show me the photos.”
McLean sat down at the table almost reverently and slit open the pictures’ protective envelope. “Are these the same pieces of furniture you and Tom looked at several weeks ago?”
Juanita studied them carefully. “No.” She tapped a photo of the walnut secretary Tom had pointed out. “Have you heard of marriages or monkeys?”
“Never in the same sentence.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I was in the shop three weeks ago, hunting. I went back Friday, determined to buy the secretary. It was expensive, but we buy because we like, not for investment. This is the piece that was there Friday. It isn’t the piece that was there three weeks ago.” Her voice rose in anger. “But Clement insisted it was the same. Acted like I was some taco-brained chica.”
McLean swallowed a smile. Anyone who underestimated Juanita Lopez because of her accent was stepping in front of a bus. “Were they similar?”
“Oh sure, if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.” She lifted her shoulders gracefully. “The first one was made of walnut. Beautiful piece. Crafted by someone who loved what he did. This one.” She snapped the picture with a short fingernail. “A marriage and a monkey. The top part was grafted on. It didn’t fit properly and was made of pine. That’s the marriage. The bottom, well that was a little better, a little older, but the hardware on the drawers was wrong and the slant top was made of oak while the main body was walnut. That’s the monkey. As in monkeyed with. He wanted the same amount of money, though. Twelve hundred dollars. That man had brass, I’m telling you.”
McLean showed her the rough inventory he’d taken that morning. “Is this consistent with what you saw Friday?”
She looked over the list, then sorted through the photographs. “This is what I saw Friday all right. But most of it isn’t what we looked at three weeks ago. I can’t be positive, but I’d guess that whatever happened to my secretary happened to a lot of other stuff in there, too. Most of this is junk. Some of it’s old, okay? But it’s still junk.”
McLean thanked Juanita, then borrowed her phone and told Mort Reed he was on the way.
Mort rolled into his combination living room and office followed closely by McLean and Caleb, Mort’s Rottweiler friend, aide, and guardian. Not that Mort needed guarding. He pivoted to a stop, grabbed an overhead bar, and, with biceps capable of crushing bricks, hoisted himself into an easy chair. He’d spent hours hunched over his computer digging through databases from Oregon to Florida and looked tired.
“You have everything I’ve been able to dig up on Zoe and Clement,” he motioned to the wad of papers in McLean’s fist. “How’d the inventory go with Regina? Any surprises?”
“Just her boyfriend, Eric. A noxious little twerp in white oxfords.”
Mort’s mouth tightened, “Twenty going on twelve, good build but a little pimply? Eyes like a dead cat?”
“You’ve met.”
“An orderly at Summit Memorial. We’ve crossed paths. Anything else?”
McLean stretched. “This fire smells like week old carp. Firth was setting up an insurance scam.”
“And he got caught in his own bonfire?”
McLean shrugged and thumbed the printouts. “We know Firth had a fire in Orlando. He netted just over thirty thousand dollars. Our contact there thinks the fire was deliberate, but officially it was an overheated extension cord. Firth’s name keeps popping up in insurance reports. The adjusters are convinced he was a con artist, but so slippery he’d never been tagged. Arson may have been his latest hobby.”
Mort scratched Caleb’s ears. “So Zoe’s store was just the latest? He takes over, inflates the building’s value through shoddy rebuilding, torches it, and collects?”
“I think it was more devious than that. He knows fire insurance will generally only pay to rebuild. Seldom hard cash to travel on. But inventory is something else. Provided it’s destroyed. I think he remodeled the store intending to bum it to the ground. He had some genuine antiques, Zoe’s at least, and jacked his inventory insurance way up. Funny thing happened on the way to the fire, however. He slipped the good stuff out the back door, possibly to Regina’s. That’s why Zoe was forced to take a vacation. He couldn’t risk her figuring out what he was up to.”
“Only he screwed up and basted himself setting the fire?”
“That’s how it looks.”
Mort nodded. “I had a chat with the medical examiner this morning while you were clumping around the bum site. They ran a blood gas on him, and Clement’s carbon monoxide reading was high enough to kill two men.”
“Drugs, anything like that?”
“It seemed pretty straightforward, so they didn’t run any tests.”
McLean turned the information over. Smoke, specifically carbon monoxide, is the biggest killer in a fire. You don’t get fire gases in your blood if you’re not breathing, so Clement was alive when it started. So far it fit like a cheap boot. All you had to do was pull hard enough.
Skimming Mort’s printouts, he came to a dead stop, picked up Summit Fire’s official reports, then compared numbers which he showed to Mort. “Why don’t you play dial-a-database again in Florida while I make a call.”
McLean punched out Zoe’s number, let it ring twenty times, then hung up, puzzlement creasing his face.
He left Mort battling with a Ma Bell clone and on a hunch drove downtown. He circled City Center Antiques twice and was about ready to go home, convinced his imagination was in overdrive. On a whim, he parked, skirted a delivery truck blocking the way, and walked down the alley behind the building. Regina’s little blue Miata peeked out from behind a dumpster.
He sidled around to Main Street. The shop was secure, but someone had forced Zoe’s door, then wedged it shut. He slipped into the downstairs foyer and at the sound of shattering glass overhead broke into a canter. He topped the stairs and barrelled toward the open apartment door.
Eric stood in the middle of the living room, a violently struggling Tina Zack clasped around the stomach while he fumbled in a coat pocket. Shards from a shattered vase littered the floor. She planted an ineffectual elbow into Eric’s midriff just as he propelled his angry load into McLean’s arms.
Scuffling, followed by a sharp slap, came from down the hallway. Tina whirled around but faltered before Eric’s soulless gaze above the .45 he’d wrenched from his pocket. Regina appeared a few moments later, gripping the telephone. “Old fool didn’t want to part with it.”