“A year and a half ago.” The slightly overweight Carter replied, then leaned forward. “The woman possessed sophisticated taste. I knew her preferences, of course, and I had acquired from a Richmond estate a perfect pair of sapphire and diamond earrings and a bracelet to match; 1890s. Couldn’t be made today.”
Ben couldn’t help a half smile, for Carter was always selling if he could. “Did you go to Lexington?”
“I did. I brought some other jewelry, as I have clients there. Delores tried on the earrings and bracelet. For an eighty-something woman, she looked good.”
“Your card was in her secretary. When the chief of police called, I volunteered to question you.”
“That secretary, French, was remarkable. Buddy Cadwalder, the Philadelphia dealer, knew Delores, too. He would kill for that secretary.” Carter stopped. “Sorry.”
“An expression. Do you remember the Munnings?”
“Who wouldn’t? Once seen you never forgot Mrs. Filley.”
“Did Mrs. Buckingham ever mention her painting?”
“Only that Mrs. Filley was such a great beauty in her day and a strong rider. We focused on, uh, personal adornment.”
“Delores Buckingham was a good client?”
“A delight. Yes, she was good. The great wealth of her family diminished over the generations, but she lived at ease, don’t get me wrong. She inherited the farm, the furniture, everything, but she was careful.”
“How so?” Ben smelled someone making coffee in Carter’s home in Ivy, a sort of subdivision west of Charlottesville itself.
Carter smelled it, too. “Would you like a cup?”
“No, thank you.”
“That’s my houseman making it. What the English might once have called a batman. I have him and a maid. Given my odd schedule I need to have the house covered.”
“Odd?”
Carter smiled. “People often think a long time before selling family jewelry. It’s so personal. It represents the deceased. Either that, or they sell the minute Momma has died. Greed,” he said with a little smack of his lips. “When they call I need to get there.”
“The seven deadly sins.” Ben closed his notebook.
“Accurate,” Carter agreed.
“Can you think of anything, a conversation? An offhand comment? A feeling?”
“With Mrs. Buckingham?” Carter put his fingers to his lips. “She had two daughters. Well married or married well. Once she said the oldest daughter would take over the farm. The younger, sixty-something by now, would remain in Phoenix. They all seemed to get along.”
“Can you think who might have stolen her Munnings?”
“No, but as you know, the value is astronomical.”
“Crawford’s painting as well as the work stolen in New Jersey were, too. Have you any idea why she was killed?”
“No. It was after the painting had been stolen. She wasn’t in the way.”
“She was killed in the same manner as Parker Bell. We’re at the point where we have to consider some connection. It is possible Mrs. Buckingham knew too much. For Parker, a blank. A total blank.”
“Yes.” He then sighed. “Fennell’s makes indestructible leather tack. This is dreadful proof of that.”
“The chief has questioned the Fennells. Kit, her son, and his wife, Marguerite. They are sick about it, of course. The chief said they are part of Lexington. People adore them, his exact words.”
“Well, I don’t doubt that they are sick about it, but I guarantee you, sales will go up.”
Ben tucked his small notebook in his pocket. “People are funny that way. There is no such thing as bad publicity. I bought one of their bridles for Nonni and a lead shank with a brass plate with her name on it. I know how good they are.” He stood up, asked one last question. “Let me come back to Mrs. Buckingham. Is it possible Mrs. Buckingham figured out who stole her Munnings?”
“Well…” A long pause followed this. “She was a woman of high intelligence. It is possible.”
CHAPTER 16
February 21, 2020 Friday
“It was one of the best-attended events ever,” Claudia Pfeiffer, the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr., Head Curator at the National Sporting Library & Museum, said to Sister as they walked through the museum. “We had hoped it would be a success but it exceeded our dreams.”
Sister noticed a small Dorothy Chhuy painting, work she liked very much and was glad the National Sporting Library did, too.
Ms. Pfeiffer was referring to the “Sidesaddle” exhibition, which ran from September 8, 2018 to March 24, 2019.
“Wonderful. The two women riding sidesaddle from Colonial Williamsburg certainly were a smash hit. I had never truly seen habits from the early eighteenth century, the beautiful dark blue and the other red with facings like military uniforms. The woman in blue wore a tricorn hat. You know, women look dazzling in a tricorn hat with one’s skirt flowing over the left leg.
“I’m sorry you missed Dr. Ulrike Weiss’s lecture. She flew from Scotland to present it and she helped us with the research for the exhibition. She’s at the University of St. Andrews and she studied here during her John H. Daniels Fellowship in 2016. We’re quite proud.”
“You have every reason to be. What surprised me is that people, and I mean people in universities, don’t realize that one of the best ways to approach a culture or a century is through sports and fashion. Well, in sidesaddle you have both and I thought your bracketing the exhibit with the years 1690–1935 opened a door.”
“You’re kind.” Ms. Pfeiffer smiled. “We love what we do. There isn’t a day that I come to work that something new, insightful, possibly exhausting isn’t happening.”
“You are good to see me. I know you all are preparing your ‘On Fly in the Salt’ exhibit. We have so many highly skilled and interesting sports here, so much water, fly-fishing isn’t for the lazy although it looks calm. Well, it is calm, but you know what I mean. My father would cast in the backyard just to keep his hand in, as he would say.”
“You saw that great movie with Brad Pitt, A River Runs Through It?”
“Did. What a way into a brotherly and paternal relationship, alcohol and real racism. Some people, well, some truly talented people like Norman Maclean can pull that off. I’m babbling on here.”
“Not at all. We’re always glad to see you.” Claudia sat on a bench in the museum; Sister sat beside her. “You called me about the Munnings. The theft of the first painting, which as you know we have exhibited here thanks to Crawford’s generosity…we do have the best people around us…but well, it was a shock, and then another and now another and a murder.”
“Which is why I wanted to drive up here. Was there anyone who kept returning to the sidesaddle exhibit? Anyone who began to attract your attention?”
“We’ve all talked about this. When we hosted the roundtable on sidesaddle horsemanship, you may recall the speakers were Devon Zebrovious, Amy Jo Magee, and Sarah O’Halloran, which was great fun since they compete sidesaddle against one another. I thought the audience would be only women but there were a few men, but not anyone who seemed at all suspicious, questioning. I don’t know, I mean I don’t know what we would have been looking for at the time.”
“Given the attractiveness of the three ladies, I don’t wonder that a few men showed up. I’d like to see them try sidesaddle.”
“Interesting you should say that because I think our ‘Sidesaddle’ exhibition, more than anything we have ever done, highlighted the position of women without being politicized, if you know what I mean?”
“I do. I remember Laura Kramer, Penny Denegre, and Amy Webb, now Walker, competing what, twenty-five years ago? The men certainly hung on the rail but I doubt they thought about the demands to be feminine, where it started, how a lady could only ride in the hunt field if so attired. No one really talked about those things.”