He sat on a sofa, picked the cat up and stroked its head.
“This is Gus,” he said. “Gotta keep him inside because coyotes come through the yard once in a while, but he doesn’t seem to mind being a house cat.”
Gus looked as if he didn’t mind anything. I glanced around the living room. There was art on every wall, most of it prints of waterfowl. Wooden decoys were scattered on shelves and tables around the room.
“Quite the collection,” I said.
“Thanks,” Murphy said. Then he crossed his arms and gazed at me. “How can I help you?”
“My client is a rich guy named Ruskin. He bought a Crowell decoy called the preening merganser from Orloff, and paid a lot of money for it, but the law took your former boss off to the clink before he could make good. Then Orloff died in prison and his house burned down, along with the decoy.”
Murphy nodded. “I already talked to the cops. What does your client want to know that isn’t in the record?”
“He thinks maybe the merganser didn’t burn up.”
Murphy scoffed. “That’s because he didn’t see the fire.”
“You did?” I remembered from the file that Murphy told the interviewer he lost his job when Orloff was arrested and hadn’t been back to the house since it was sealed.
“I didn’t see the actual fire,” he said, catching himself. “I saw the TV stuff and came by the house later. It went up quick, like it had been set.”
“The investigation didn’t say anything about arson.”
“A guy like Orloff would know people who could do a smart job. Everything had been reduced to cinders. Everything. I don’t know where Ruskin would get the idea that the bird wasn’t burned up.”
“From this.” I opened the carton, extracted the plastic case, and set it on the coffee table. “Made in China. Ruskin saw an ad in a magazine and ordered this Crowell reproduction.”
“Chinese are pretty clever at copying stuff,” he said.
“Ruskin says a copy this good could only have been made from the original. Which means the authentic Crowell didn’t burn up.”
“Orloff could have had the fake made before the real bird got burned.”
“That’s not what the record shows. The repro was made after the house fire.”
He shrugged. “Can I take a look?”
I handed him the encased bird model. He ran his fingers over the plastic surface of the box.
“Where did you get this?”
“Probably the same place you got the one you gave to the museum.”
“You stopped by the museum?”
I pointed to a photo of the Crowell workshop that hung over the fireplace mantle.
“They moved the decoy to the woodworking barn,” I said.
His hand stopped stroking the box. “No kidding. Why did they do that?” He sounded almost startled.
“Thought it would add to the workshop’s authenticity. The lady at the museum said you were a bird carver.”
“I carved most of the birds in the house, but I’m no Elmer Crowell. I’ve taken a few courses and have the tools.”
“That makes you an expert compared to me. How does the mail order repro stack up against the original?”
“Technically, it’s very good, but it doesn’t have the soul you’d see in a Crowell. I figured I’d never own a real one, so I bought the reproduction. I must have seen the same ad as Ruskin. I ordered one just to see what they’d done.”
He put the box down on the coffee table, which is when I noticed the blurry blue tattoo on his forearm. I could still make out the eagle, globe, and anchor of the Marine insignia. That explained the military buzz cut of his white hair.
“Semper fi,” I said, and pushed my sleeve up to show him a smaller version of the EGA on the top of my arm near the shoulder.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Where’d you serve?”
“Up by the border mostly. You?”
“I spent a lot of time around Pleiku. Got a Purple Heart. What about you?”
I shook my head. “Only wounds I got were psychological. Worst one was when a village got shelled after I told everyone they were safe. Now I think real hard before I make a promise.”
A knowing smile came to his lips. “Sometimes you don’t see the forest for the trees.”
Murphy seemed more relaxed. He told me that after the Marines he had married and gone into the postal service like a lot of vets, retired early after his wife got a bad disease that eventually killed her, and started a small company keeping an eye on summer houses when their owners weren’t around. That’s how he met Orloff, and went to work for him as a full-time caretaker until the time his boss got arrested.
“Did he cheat you?” I asked.
“He owed me a month’s salary. They say he only went after big accounts. But he stiffed little guys like me. He even cheated a fund for handicapped kids that didn’t know he was handling its money. He was like somebody’s uncle, people trusted him right to the end.”
“Speaking of the end, this looks like a dead one,” I said. I gave him my business card. “Let me know if you remember anything else.”
“I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. Come by to see me anytime. I don’t go out much and stay up late. Maybe I’ll hear something from the bird carver crowd. You never know.”
“That’s right,” I said, getting up from the couch to shake hands. “You never do.”
The investigative report said the fake decoys had been mailed from Harwich. I stopped by the post office, went up to the desk and asked the postal clerk what the cheapest rate would be for sending out a box like the one in my hands.
“Depends on weight, of course. Parcel post is the cheapest, but it’s also the slowest,” she said.
“I was talking to a friend named Mike Murphy. He’s got a P.O. Box here and sends out a lot of packages, but I don’t remember what rate he used.”
“We’ve got a few Murphys. I don’t recall anyone doing a lot of shipping.”
“I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”
I remembered that there was more than one post office in town. I got back in my truck and drove a few miles to the pint-sized West Harwich post office. I went through the same routine with the postmistress, and this time I struck gold.
“Mike uses straight parcel post to send boxes that look just like that,” she said. “Haven’t seen him for a while, though. Not since he closed his box.”
“I’ll tell Mike you miss seeing him,” I said.
Twenty minutes later I drove down the pot-holed dirt driveway that leads to the converted boathouse I call home. Chez Socarides was part of an old estate when I bought it and rebuilt it into a year-round residence. The place is still just short of ramshackle, but it’s got a million dollar water view of a big bay and distant barrier beach.
My cat Kojak ambushed me as soon as I stepped inside. I poured him some dry food, grabbed the phone, went out on the deck, and tucked the box with the fake bird under a chair. Then I dialed the number for Ruskin. He answered right away.
I told him about my talk with Mike Murphy, his connection with Orloff, and the visit to the post office.
“Do you suspect Murphy knows more about my decoy than what he’s saying?”
“Yes, I do, which is why I want to go back to talk to him again.”
“When you do, tell him he’d better say where it is, or else.”
“Or else what, Mr. Ruskin?”
“I’ll leave that to your imagination.”
I didn’t like what I was imagining. Ruskin was suggesting that I threaten Murphy.
“I don’t work that way, Mr. Ruskin.”
“Well, I do,” he said. “And I have found my methods extremely persuasive.”