The job seemed like an uncomplicated one, except for the Orloff angle. The charming old bandit had left suicides, divorces, and bankruptcies in the wake of his stealing spree. And his greedy fingers were still reaching from the grave. Ruskin was unsavory, but he wouldn’t be the first client of dubious character that I’d worked for. Any doubts I might have entertained went up in smoke when Bridget handed me a check made out in an amount triple what I would have charged.
I rubbed the check lightly between my thumb and forefinger. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good,” Ruskin said. “Let me know as soon as you hear something.”
He rose from his chair and, without another word, headed for the door.
Hiring interview was over.
Seconds after Ruskin left the room, the old gray man showed up and pushed the wall button. As the unicorn tapestry slid across the window, he handed me a cardboard box.
“Mr. Ruskin thought this might assist you in your work,” he said. “He wants it returned when you are through. It is not to be taken from its protective container.”
He led us back the way we came. We stepped onto the porch and the door clicked shut behind us.
“Was that for real?” I asked, taking a breath of fresh air. “That stuff with the allergies?”
“Mr. Ruskin could be a hypochondriac, I suppose, but he’s gone through a lot of unnecessary trouble and expense modifying this house if he’s simply imagining his allergies. All his food is prepared in accordance with his allergy issues. The butler is a bit of a gossip. He told me Ruskin is allergic to everything you can think of.”
“Does he ever leave the house?”
“Not very often, the butler says; only for urgent matters, and when he does he wears a hazmat suit. He usually goes out only at night.”
I set the cardboard box down on the porch and peeled off the sealing tape. Then I lifted out the transparent plastic container that held the reproduction decoy Ruskin had shown me. The lid was secured with a padlock.
I jiggled the lock. “Ruskin is very protective of his property.”
“Mr. Ruskin is deathly afraid of contaminated things or people coming into the main house. When it comes back this box will go through a clean room where it will be wiped down and sterilized. Anyone coming into the living quarters from the outside has to wear a throw-away suit.”
“Like the valet?”
“Yes. His name is Dudley. That’s all I know.”
I put the bird container into the cardboard box and Bridget gave me a ride back to the marina.
There wasn’t much small talk. I was thinking about Ruskin’s strange request. She was probably mind-counting her retainer. She dropped me off in the parking lot. When I got out of the car, she handed me a brown, eight-by-ten envelope.
“This report was prepared by our staff investigators. I’ll call you at some point to see how things are going. Mr. Ruskin’s phone number is inside. He has asked that you contact him directly as the investigation moves along. I’ll be in touch.”
She put the car into gear and left me standing at about the same spot she stopped my trek to Trader Ed’s. This time I made it all the way to a bar stool. My personal alcohol meter was on empty, but I decided to stay sober. Sipping on a club soda with cranberry juice and lime, I went through the papers inside the envelope Bridget had given me.
I skimmed a history of the Crowell decoys and read that his workshop was still standing. It had been moved from the original site to the property of the Harwich Historical Society at Brooks Academy, which was a short drive from where I was sitting.
Seemed like a logical place to start. I tucked the papers back into the envelope, slid off the bar stool and headed for my pickup truck with the cardboard box tucked under my arm.
If you looked at a map of Cape Cod you’d see that the town of Harwich is near where the elbow would be on the peninsula, which curls out into the Atlantic like a bent arm. Harwich is an old seafaring town with Nantucket Sound at its doorstep, so it’s no surprise that it once had a school of navigation.
The school was housed in a graceful, 19th century Greek-revival building named Brooks Academy that had been turned into a museum run by the Harwich Historical Society. I parked behind the academy and walked across the parking lot to a low shingled building.
Hanging over a sliding barn door was a black quarter board with the words “A. E. Crowell, Bird Carvings” in white letters. On a shelf above the door to the shop was a carving of a Canada goose. The workshop was closed, but a pleasant, middle-aged woman working in the museum opened it up for me. She accidentally set off an alarm and had to shut it off. I stepped through the entrance to the workshop and into a room with wall displays that told about Crowell and his work.
I tossed a couple of bills into the donation box and said I carved birds for a hobby. I jokingly asked if the Canada goose was a Crowell. She laughed. “It wouldn’t be out there if it were.”
The museum had a few Crowell decoys in its collection, she said, but nothing like the carvings that were bringing a million dollars.
The shop contained a workbench, wood-working tools, a pot-bellied stove, and what looked like an antique sander and band saw. A half-dozen miniature bird models with minimalist details sat on a shelf.
A carving on a work bench caught my eye. It looked identical to the fake bird sitting in the box on the front seat of my truck. I asked where it came from.
“A bird carver named Mike Murphy donated the reproduction. We had it in the museum where it would be more secure, but since it’s only a reproduction someone suggested we put it out here. As you may have noticed, we have a burglar alarm in the barn, but there’s nothing in the workshop that’s really valuable. Even the tools are borrowed.”
I thanked her, put another couple of bills in the donation box and walked back to my truck. I leafed through the folder Bridget had given me and re-read the investigation report where they interviewed someone named Mike Murphy.
A guy with the same name had been the caretaker of the Orloff mansion. He told the investigators he had seen the merganser in Orloff’s study. The bird was there when the marshals sealed the place. He assumed it had been burned in the fire. He couldn’t say for sure because he got to the fire after the house had burned down. Someone at the fire department had called him.
The investigators left it at that. I might have done the same thing, except for Murphy’s donation to the historical society. It suggested that he had more than a casual interest in the preening merganser, fake or not. And I wanted to know why.
Murphy lived in a one-story ranch house in a working-class neighborhood that was probably never fashionable, nor ever would be. I parked in the driveway behind a beige Toyota Camry and knocked on the front door. The stocky man who answered the door stared at me with inquisitive blue eyes.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“My name is Socarides.” I pointed to the Thalassa logo on my blue polo shirt. “I run a charter boat out of Hyannis. I’m also an ex-Boston cop and I pick up a few bucks on the side as a private investigator for insurance companies. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about Viktor Orloff.”
He gave a weary shake of his head. “Orloff is the gift that keeps on giving. Wish I never heard of the guy.”
“From what I know of Orloff, you have a lot of company.”
Murphy grinned. He had a wide jaw cradling a mouth filled with white even teeth.
“Come on in,” he said with a sigh.
Before I accepted his invitation I went to the truck and got the cardboard box. He gave the carton a curious glance, then ushered me into a living room paneled in knotty pine. He shooed away a long gray-haired cat from a wood-framed chair and told me to take a seat.