Flying Solo(36)

This was a profound failure. She couldn’t not ask more questions. Just how cheaply made was this? How could it possibly have made it into the possession of a woman who lived on the coast for ninety years, through the ups and downs of halibut and cod and the hipster interest in wild blueberries? Laurie picked up her phone and looked up the number of Wesson & Truitt, and she dialed.

“Wesson & Truitt.”

“Hi, I’m wondering if you can help me with some details from a consultation you recently were kind enough to do on a duck decoy from my aunt’s house. Well, my great-aunt. It turns out it’s not really valuable, but I was wondering whether whoever did the assessment might know anything that would give me a little bit more detail about how the piece got to my aunt. My great-aunt.”

“Okay,” said the cheerful woman on the phone. “Can you give me the document number from your copy of the consultation record?”

Laurie leaned forward and grabbed the paper off the coffee table. “Yes, hang on.” She pushed the boa out of her face. “Sorry. It’s 283491.”

“Huh,” the woman on the phone said. “Does it have a letter in the front? All our document numbers start with a letter. If it’s a decoy, it would be an S for Sporting. Can you look up in the top left corner?”

“It just says 283491.” What a pain in the patoot this duck had turned out to be.

There was a pause on the phone, and Laurie could hear the muffled sound of the woman talking to someone while holding her hand over the receiver. Then she was back. “I’m going to put you on the phone with our decoy expert, okay?”

“Okay, thank you.”

The next voice was a man. “This is Jim Baines. Can I help you?”

“Yes.” She twirled the boa in her hand. “I have a consultation report here, the document number is 283491. It was a replica, a Carl Kittery replica. You did it sometime this week, and I’m just wondering if you know anything else about it. It was my aunt’s. My great-aunt.”

He was quiet. “I’m a little bit at a loss. As Debra told you, that’s not our document number, and I haven’t evaluated anything from or related to Kittery in at least a few weeks.”

Laurie felt something very, very unfortunate happening in the pit of her stomach. “Well, my—a guy I know brought it in for me. I’m looking at the report right now. It’s on your letterhead, dated yesterday.”

“It says Wesson and Truitt on the top? Blue lettering?”

Did he think she couldn’t read? “Yes, of course.”

“Ma’am, I have to tell you, I’m stumped. If you can, go back to your friend and double check that what he gave you is our document, and that he didn’t maybe put together his own report referencing ours? Have him give you the original.”

“I’m sure it’s the original.” She was not sure it was the original. She cleared her throat. “I’m going to check and get back to you.” After she hung up, Laurie sat on the couch, staring at the report. Letterhead at the top looked right, the same logo that showed on their website. The phone number was different, though, from the one she’d just called. Not unusual—lots of places have more than one number. She dialed the number on the report, but the phone just rang and rang.

Something is wrong, but I don’t know what. Something is wrong. What’s wrong? Am I confused? She had that feeling that you get when you’re searching the parking lot and you’re briefly certain that your car has been stolen, until you turn around and it’s there. Her car was going to be there in this case, she was sure of it. It was just, there was something confusing, what was it? She had been looking the report up and down for close to a minute when her eyes fell on the tiny, tiny footer type at the very bottom of the page. The address was listed as 1234 Bluebird Way. And under that, there was a space for a motto, a little spot where you’d expect to see “Est. 1905” or “Best plumbers for the money” or something.

On this piece of paper, at the very bottom, under the fake-sounding address, it said, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.”

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no.



* * *



—

Laurie normally loved going to Camden; it was touristy down by the water, but there were sprawling houses not far away that she had admired when she was little, dream houses with acres of space spread out around them. And a couple of blocks from the road, there was a small building with a sign outside that was divided in two: the left side said SEA SPRAY ANTIQUES, and the right side said SAVE THE BEST. There was only one door. Laurie parked her car and went up onto the stoop to peek inside. It was neat and quaint, with long shelves full of dishes and clocks and lamps and vases, full but not cramped. She stepped inside, and a bell rang.

She didn’t see Matt, but a woman with short dark hair and a Captain America T-shirt was sitting behind a counter in the back. She called out a greeting at the sound of the bell, and Laurie acknowledged her with a smile and a weak wave. She walked up a row of clocks, touching their bases even though the sign said DO NOT TOUCH, watching the row progress from small bedside models to tall living-room fixtures that probably had to be wound by hand. At the end of the row, she saw that there was a desk in the corner opposite where Captain America was, with two chairs out in front of it and one behind it. There was no one there, just a computer, an old-school yellow rotary phone, and a display of business cards. She went over and took one, and it was identical to the one Matt had brought to her when he came to Dot’s house. There were two phone numbers listed. One had the words “business hours” next to it, and one—the one he’d called her from a few times that he’d said was his cell—said “anytime.”