A large black and brown mongrel came loping down the hall like an official greeter, and behind him, Tannenbaum himself. He was a tall angular man about forty, wearing a beard and rimless glasses and formally dressed in a dark vested suit and tie, white shirt with cuff links and carefully polished black oxfords.
Putting his hand on the dog’s head, he said, “My partner, Rupert, likes you.”
“Tell Rupert I like him back.”
“He knows. In our profession we develop a sixth sense about people. At least in my case it’s sixth, in Rupert’s it’s probably first. Perhaps a very long time ago it was our first, too, and our initial reaction to the approach of a stranger was, is this a friend or an enemy? It remains a good question. You are—” Tannenbaum narrowed his eyes to concentrate their focus — “I’d guess somewhere in between, leaning a bit towards friend, right?”
“Well...”
“I see you were admiring my miniatures. Or perhaps admire isn’t quite the word. I don’t care for miniatures myself, life is small and meager enough. A sculpture by Henry Moore, that’s what I covet, though my mean little hall here is hardly the place for one.”
Tannenbaum had a soft pleasant voice which made what he had to say seem more interesting than it actually was. He went on to describe the particular Henry Moore he would have liked to own, now in a private collection in Paris. Evidently Rupert had heard it all before. He went back to his rug at the rear of the hall, leaving the practical end of the business to his partner.
The dog’s action seemed to remind Tannenbaum of his duties. He said, “What can I do for you?”
Aragon presented his card, which Tannenbaum glanced at briefly before putting it in his inside breast pocket. The pocket was already bulging, Aragon noticed, as if Tannenbaum’s collections were not confined to valuables like tapestries and miniatures.
“Are you buying or selling, Mr. Aragon?”
“I’m asking.”
“You want information?”
“Yes.”
“My profit on information will never buy me a Henry Moore. However, in the interests of good will and that sort of thing, I’ll try to oblige. What’s on your mind?”
“Our office is holding some important legal documents which must be signed by one of our clients. I have cause to believe she’s also one of yours, Miranda Shaw, Mrs. Neville Shaw.”
“So?”
“Mrs. Shaw has, for all practical purposes, disappeared.”
“Well, I haven’t got her,” Tannenbaum said reasonably. “My partner wouldn’t approve.
Rupert took an immediate dislike to her. Probably her perfume too much and too musky. Rupert has such a sensitive nose it sometimes affects his judgment. I myself found her attractive, though a bit over the hill, wouldn’t you say?”
“I might, but the fact is I’ve never met her.”
“You should.”
“My boss thinks I should, too, and the sooner the better.”
Tannenbaum brushed a piece of lint off one of the tapestries. His movements were quick and precise, as if even the least important of them was thought out in advance for maximum efficiency. “Mrs. Shaw is not one of my regular customers. She came in about three weeks ago with a number of things she wanted to sell me then and there. I explained to her that my business is usually done on consignment and there would be a delay in payment. Some of the stuff might go immediately — for example, I’ve had a buyer waiting a long time for a coin collection like Shaw’s. But other items, like the antique silver chess set and the jewelry, would have to wait for the right buyers. Mrs. Shaw was anxious to avoid a delay, so she offered to take whatever I was willing to pay her on the spot. I gave her what I believed to be a fair price considering the financial risk I was assuming. Actually, the deal’s turning out better than I expected — some of the jewelry has been sold already. I included it in an estate auction which I conducted last week and the right buyers came along.”
“Admiral Young’s daughters.”
“Why, yes. You know them?”
“Slightly,” Aragon said. Even slightly seemed like a lot.
“The girls come in here quite often looking for a bargain. They never find any, of course — it’s my business to see that people don’t get bargains — but they think they do, so they make a purchase now and then, usually a rather small one. The ruby necklace and bracelet set was more expensive than anything they’d previously bought. They took a fancy to it for some reason.”
“Juliet recognized it as Mrs. Shaw’s.”
“I see.” Tannenbaum took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the frame had carved a red arc. “Or rather, I don’t see. Surely you can’t believe they bought the set for sentimental reasons?”
“It’s possible.”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Aragon. The Admiral’s daughters aren’t given to sentiment. Behind all that moronic conversation they’re as hard-headed and hard-nosed as a pair of old Navy chiefs.”
“I think they’re pathetic.”
“Are they clients of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Wait till they try to beat you out of your fee. They won’t seem quite so pathetic.”
“The fee’s already been settled.”
“Well. You must have a way with you.”
Aragon resisted the urge to tell the truth. Smedler wouldn’t be too happy if word got out that one of his employees had, twice in the same day, offered his services free. “It’s a gift,” he said, more or less accurately. “What can you tell me about Mrs. Shaw?”
Tannenbaum replaced his glasses and looked toward the rear of the hall as if seeking the advice of his partner. Rupert was asleep and snoring. “She puzzled me, that much I can tell you. Many of my first-time customers act the way she did, nervous and ill at ease, but there was something contradictory about her, an air of excitement I couldn’t figure out. It was the watch that clued me in.”
“What kind of watch?”
“A man’s wristwatch, a gold Swiss Jubilee. Very sophisticated and classy, with a face that shows the time only when viewed from a certain angle. I picked it up to examine it for an on-the-spot appraisal, but she asked for it back, said she’d changed her mind and wanted to hold on to it as a memento of her late husband. This is a common enough practice, for a bereaved person to hold on to a watch and keep it running and ticking like a heartbeat. I didn’t believe her, though. Still don’t.”
“What do you believe?”
“A watch like that,” Tannenbaum said, “would make a very nice gift.”
Aragon was eating dinner, a barely warm pizza with mozzarella that clung in strings to the roof of his mouth and had to be dislodged with beer. He’d placed the phone on the table in front of him and every now and then he stared at it as though it was a stubborn little beast that needed to be urged into action. It rang, finally, shortly after seven-thirty and he answered on the first ring.
“Hello, Laurie.”
“Tom.” She sounded pleased. “How did you know it was me?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
“What a liar you are. You were thinking about me.”
“Yes.”
“Good things?”
“The best.”
“Me, too. Listen, Tom, we’ll see each other at Thanksgiving. That’s not too far away and I get three whole days off.”
“The last time you had three whole days off you slept two and a half of them.”
“I remember the other half-day very well,” Laurie said. “Do you?”
“Vaguely. I may have to refresh my memory at Thanksgiving.”
“That’s a lovely idea.”
“I hope so. It’s the only one I have at the moment.”
“Oh, Tom.” There was a silence. “We’d better change the subject. This one is getting us nowhere and costing twenty-four cents a minute. Let’s talk about goats.”