“I’ll bring some coveralls, so you guys won’t look like who you are.”
“Good idea.” Stone hung up and called Dino. “I think we found the secretary,” he said.
“Where?”
“In a storage facility downtown. Cantor and I are going to pick it up, and we need your help.”
“So now I’m a furniture mover?”
“I’ll buy dinner. Be here at seven-thirty sharp.”
“Oh, what the hell, okay.”
Stone and Dino were standing on the curb at seven-thirty, when Bob Cantor pulled up in his van. He tossed them both coveralls, and they put them on and got in.
“How long is this going to take?” Dino asked as they drove downtown.”
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe,” Stone replied.
“So we’ll have dinner after?”
“Dino, we’ve got to deliver the piece to Barton Cantor in Connecticut.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to come along; we just need your help getting the thing in the van. Barton will help us get it out.”
“I’ll go; I hate eating alone.”
“Maybe we’ll have dinner up there.”
They arrived at Sutton Moving amp; Storage, and presented themselves at the night desk on the loading dock.
“We’re here to pick up something from Mr. Charles Crow’s locker,” Cantor said. “Number three-twenty. His secretary called.”
The man consulted a list. “Nothing on here for tonight.”
“Sure there is,” Cantor said.
“Oh, here it is. It’s scheduled for eight A.M.”
“Nah, she told you eight P.M.”
“She didn’t tell me nothing; I just came on half an hour ago.”
“Well, whoever took the call screwed up and put down A.M. instead of P.M. You going to make a big deal out of this and piss off Mr. Crow?”
“Nah, what do I care? Go on up. You know where it is?”
“Third floor?”
“Yeah, turn left out of the elevator. There’s a couple of hand trucks over there, if you need them.” He pointed.
Stone and Dino got hand trucks, and Cantor led the way. They took the elevator upstairs and found the locker, a big one, and it was padlocked. Cantor took a small leather case from his pocket, unzipped it and took out a set of lock picks. After a minute with the picks, the lock snapped open, and Cantor swung the doors wide.
It stood there alone in the locker, in two pieces, wrapped in movers’ blankets and secured with duct tape.
Stone pulled off some tape and looked at the piece underneath. “This is it!” Stone said. “Now be careful with the thing; we don’t want to damage it.”
They got each piece loaded onto a hand truck and relocked the locker. They took the two pieces downstairs in the big elevator and loaded them into Cantor’s van.
“That was slick,” Stone said as they drove away.
“You going to tell Barton we’re coming?” Dino asked.
“Yeah.” Stone got out his cell phone and called Barton’s house.
“Hello?”
“Barton, it’s Stone Barrington. Are you going to be home this evening?”
“Carla and I are just on our way out to dinner.”
“Well, be home in an hour and forty-five minutes, because I’m bringing you a present.” He hung up before Barton could ask any questions. “We’ll surprise him,” he said to Dino and Cantor.
Near the appointed time they turned into Cabot’s driveway and found him waiting for them outside the barn. He unlocked the door, and the four of them carried the two pieces inside.
“Let’s get these blankets off,” Barton said, tugging at the duct tape that secured them.
They stripped off the blankets and set the bookcase on top of the base.
Barton walked around the secretary, looking at it closely, running a hand over the varnish. “Very nice,” he said, “but it’s not mine.”
39
Stone stared at the secretary. He turned and looked at Barton.
“What do you mean, it isn’t yours?”
“I thought I was pretty clear,” Barton said.
“This is the secretary that was locked in Charlie Crow’s storage locker. It was the only thing in there.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Barton said. “It’s quite beautiful, but it just isn’t mine. This piece is a copy of the Newport secretary. It was manufactured in Charleston, South Carolina, sometime between eighteen ninety and nineteen ten. The quality of the mahogany isn’t anything like that of my secretary, and the company built more than three hundred copies over the twenty-year period, more than half of which survive. I could take it down to my shop and get seventy, seventy-five thousand dollars for it. Anybody who paid more would be an idiot.”
“How do you know all that?” Dino asked.
Barton crooked a finger, led them behind the piece and pointed at a brass plate that gave the name and address of the manufacturer and a number, 241.
Dino directed a withering glance at Stone. “So, under your sterling leadership, we stole the wrong secretary.”
“That’s not fair, Dino,” Cantor said. “After all, we didn’t even take all the wrapping off.”
“Stone wouldn’t have known the difference if we had,” Dino said.
“Did I ever say I was an expert on eighteenth-century American furniture?” Stone asked.
“Look, fellas,” Barton said, “just rewrap the bloody thing and get it out of here, will you?”
The three of them went to work, taping the blankets around the piece, while Barton watched impatiently, then they loaded it back into the van and left.
“Why don’t we get some dinner and take the thing back tomorrow?” Dino asked.
“Because,” Stone said, “Charlie Crow is sending somebody to pick it up tomorrow morning at eight.”
“Oh.”
Stone looked at his watch. “We might make it to Elaine’s by midnight.”
“Yeah,” Dino said, “if we don’t get arrested for grand theft secretary.”
At the Sutton warehouse, they woke up the night man, who was snoring away, his feet on his desk.
“What?” he said, snapping his eyes open.
“We’re taking this piece to Mr. Crow’s locker,” Cantor said.
“Didn’t you just take it out?”
“We got our orders,” Cantor replied.
“Okay, go ahead,” the man said.
They trundled the two pieces up to the locker, which Cantor opened with his lock picks, and, when the pieces had been returned to their original spot, snapped the lock shut again.
Stone and Dino walked into Elaine’s at half past midnight, while Cantor parked the van. The joint was jumping. Gianni, one of the two headwaiters, approached them. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d have kept a table for you.”
Stone looked at his regular table and saw four people he didn’t know sitting there. “Who’s that?”
