didn’t say anything. He’d bought art from Grey, and maybe he felt some kind of loyalty. Or perhaps he felt defensive. Of course, he might be brooding, wondering if the pieces he’d bought at the fair were fakes as the head might be.
“The head. The stone head,” he said finally.
I knew what he was talking about. Focus, Jenna, focus on the stone head. Don’t get involved in the murder.
“Don’t worry,” I said. I didn’t have time to find a murderer. For that matter, I didn’t have time to research his stone head. I looked at my watch and thought about Tom Sharpen’s daughter gazing down at her father’s head. Would knowing his murderer give her any relief? Solutions often did make one feel better.
I pulled out my phone to call the brother. As I punched in the number, I wondered if the head had rolled, or bounced.
“THANK you so much for seeing us on such short notice. We’ve just seen your sister at the house.”
“She’s not doing too well.”
“No,” P.P. said.
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her.” I looked around the glassed corner office and out toward the Bay Bridge to my right and the glistening water that led the eye to the Golden Gate. I tried to picture the scene without bridges or buildings, but couldn’t. They were as much a part of the scene as my eyes, my curvy body, my impatience were a part of me. This was home, had always been home, peopled and constructed.
He shifted the subject to our reason for being there. “You bought one of my father’s pieces at auction?”
“Not at auction, at the yard sale.”
His generous brows bunched together, a dimple forming in one cheek as he momentarily pursed his lips. He leaned forward then back in his chair in one fluid motion. “We didn’t sell any sculpture at the yard sale. Just odds and ends. Most of the work was too valuable. The yard sale was my nephews’ idea, though my sister ended up doing most of the work. It kept her busy, and it was helpful, I think, in keeping her mind off his death. At least for a short while.
“But all the sculpture went to auction. Amazingly, the auction house managed to fit it all in at the last minute. I don’t know how they produce those auction catalogues so quickly. I think they included my father’s estate in the upcoming sale because he had written extensive notes and they didn’t need to do too much research. He’d written blurbs on each piece, and they more or less lifted those for the catalogue.”
“Your father kept good records?”
“Very good. I think there was only one piece that he hadn’t kept an invoice and notes for.” It dawned on him. “Is that the piece you bought?”
“Don’t know,” P.P. said.
“It was a Cambodian head,” I said.
“Yes. That’s the one. It was shoved to the back of the kitchen cabinet, behind the blender and an old coffee maker. I assumed that it was a modern copy that he’d picked up. He sometimes did that when he was traveling. Bought contemporary sculptures for comparison with the authentic pieces that he owned. He said you had to keep up on the fakes that were being made, so you didn’t buy them yourself. He said there were fads.”
“Fads?” P.P. asked.
“Yes, fads in carving, fads in types of pieces that people wanted to own. He told a story about being on a street in Ho Chi Minh City where they sell antiques—he always put the word ‘antiques’ in quotes.” He drew quotes in the air. “Each shop on this street had a sixth-century wooden carving. He thought it was hysterical that anyone might buy one of those sculptures. But he said that people bought them once they were in Western galleries, because they didn’t know that there was one in every shop on that street. Apparently the forgers had gotten their hands on wood that dated back to that period, so when the wood was carbon-14 tested the date was correct. It was the carving that was wrong.
“So I assumed that head at the back of the cabinet was one of his new ones. I’d already sent the remainder of the collection to auction, and I couldn’t find any notes. Plus, he’d been obsessing for months about a fake that some dealer in Bangkok had sold him. He was furious, had had a lengthy exchange with him.”
“Do you have that correspondence?”
“No. I didn’t find it anywhere. I believe he was speaking with the man by phone, or on Skype. He’d become quite enamored of talking on the Internet. He liked that he could see the person and assess their honesty.”
“He wasn’t very trusting?”
Sharpen looked thoughtful. “If you’d asked me that five years ago, I would have said he was a trusting person. But the more involved he became in his collecting—and he’d become more involved since he retired—the less trusting he got.”
“Because he’d encountered more dishonest people?” I asked.
“I’m not so sure about that. But he’d learned more about the art. And that had made him aware of the forgery trade in Asia. He’d become more skeptical, more critical.”
“Not necessarily bad,” said P.P.
“No, I don’t think it was bad, but it had a negative effect on him. He was more combative. He’d never been one to lie down in an argument, but in the past few years he’d become downright ornery.”
“Ah.” P.P.’s left leg bounced. Sitting was not his forte. I wondered if he was imagining himself as Tom Sharpen, turning cynical as he learned about the art trade.
“That’s too bad. And you think that this head had something to do with it?” I asked.
“I really don’t know. Some piece had him bothered. Whether it was that head or some other sculpture, I don’t know. It may explain why it was pushed to the back of the cabinet and why there weren’t any papers about it. But, as I said, he had been in communication with the person he bought the forgery from—whatever the forgery was—and you would have expected some sort of file on it. Of course, the person who killed him had ransacked his desk and file cabinet, so they may well have taken the receipt or his working file.”
P.P. and I looked at each other. “His working file?” I asked.
“Yes, he had a file on each of his sculptures, even the less valuable ones. But there wasn’t a file on that one. And the killer went pretty thoroughly through the drawer where he kept his collection information. The drawer was open, files splattered with blood, some half pulled out, others out of order. He was meticulous, so nothing would have been out of order.”
“The wood file cabinet?” P.P. asked.
He looked at P.P. “Yes, that’s the collection cabinet. That was the collection cabinet.” His eyes suddenly filled with tears. He looked at his watch and stood. “I have a client coming momentarily, and I need to go over some papers before he arrives. I hope this has been helpful.”
“Yes, it has. Do you by any chance have a list of the dealers he dealt with?”
“No. I do have the folder with the invoices. In fact, I have it here. If you don’t mind me putting you in a conference room, you’re
