Flying Solo(59)

“Sure,” Rocky said. “Angie, I’m taking a second, keep an eye out.”

Even criminals have women to keep an eye out.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk with Ryan over toward a big black pickup truck with a decal on the side that said FINE GOODS BY ROCK. They leaned on the truck. Laurie started picking up and putting down a series of Precious Moments figurines.

“So what’s up, how can I help?” Rocky asked.

“My name’s John.” Yep, that was him. John No Last Name.

“Hey, John.”

“And I think we know somebody in common,” Ryan said. “You know Matt Pell?”

“Yeah, he’s got a store in Camden. We’ve done some work together.”

“Well, he and I have done some work together, too.” Laurie held her breath. Baby figurine. Angel figurine. Figurine with a little sheep. This pause was long. Uncomfortably long. Glacially long.

“Have we met before?” Rocky said. “Did you grow up around here?”

Didn’t I know you in college? Didn’t you date my sister?

“No,” Ryan said.

“I could have sworn. Like, I’ve seen you.”

“I just have one of those faces.”

“You’re sure we’ve never met?”

“Sometimes people think I look like the guy from Suits.”

Another pause. “Oh yeah. I think that’s it.”

Laurie tried, but couldn’t help it: She coughed with her fist over her mouth so that nobody could see her trying not to smile. But of course, this was the extremely easy part.

“So,” Rocky said in his slightly muffled voice, “you know Matt.”

“Right. I think he gave you a piece. A duck. Yeah? A Kittery.”

“Let’s say he did.”

Laurie flicked her eyes over and saw Ryan turn to face Rocky as he leaned on the truck. “He’s full of shit,” Ryan said.

“That’s often the case, yeah.”

“He’s specifically full of shit about this. He and I dummied up that duck. It’s a fake. We found it, we thought it might be a Kittery, but it wasn’t. So we did some work on it until it looked like it was. We were supposed to be going fifty-fifty.”

Rocky put his hands on his hips. “What happened?”

“I got nervous. I told him I thought we needed to lower the expectations, sell it as a nice piece but not a Kittery. Too much money involved, too complicated. I didn’t want to pursue it, you know? Because it was kind of fraud?”

“Ah, shit,” Rocky muttered.

“He didn’t want to hear it. We had a big fight about it, and he told me we could talk about it again and figure out what to do. Next thing I hear is that he’s trying to sell it through you. And he’s cutting me out.”

“He showed me proof, though. Pretty solid.”

Laurie’s heart sped up. She could feel a crackle in her skin.

“What did he show you, exactly?”

“Hang on.”

Laurie watched as Rocky went around the side of the truck, opened the passenger door, and leaned in. He looked like he was opening the glove box, and when he got back to Ryan, he was holding an envelope, which Ryan opened. “Wow.”

He couldn’t say, Wow, look at this certificate of authenticity and photograph of Carl Kittery carving this specific duck? He couldn’t say, Wow, look at this letter from the Bar Harbor Historical Society? He couldn’t even give her a hint? Just “wow”?

“Wow is right,” Rocky said. “That’s the contract to do the cleanout on the lady’s house. And in the picture, that’s the lady. That’s according to the letter.”

The lady, the picture, the letter?

“Yeah, he told me he was going to do this, but I wasn’t sure he really would. I have bad news,” Ryan said in a dry voice that seemed barely his. “There’s no lady. I mean, there is a lady, and he cleaned out her house. But that’s not where he got it. It didn’t belong to her. We found it, we fixed it up, we tried to sell it. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Thank God, Laurie thought. This is one of the things we were ready for.

“So he just happened to clean out her house?”

“No,” Ryan said. “He was looking for somebody who would be believable. Believable as somebody who might have had this thing all these years without anybody knowing. He was looking for, you know, a spinster. Found this lady, got hold of some of her pictures, the rest is history.”

Spinster. Even as a line, Laurie hated it.

“And he faked the letter.”

“Yes. Contract’s real, lady’s real, letter’s fake, picture’s just him watching a lot of YouTube videos about compositing in Photoshop.” Ryan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. And even though she couldn’t see it, Laurie knew that at the top, it said, in blue letters, WESSON & TRUITT. “Appraisers knew what this thing was right away. Didn’t fool them at all, even though we’d tried to jazz it up.”

    Wood duck decoy, approximately 2008. Produced in bulk in the style of Carl Kittery and distributed to museum and souvenir shops as part of a promotion commemorating the history of American folk art. Also sold at traveler locations including Logan Airport. Original sale price approximately $25.99. Current value similar. Many examples available through online auction sites and estate sales, selling for approximately $30.00. Further appraisal not necessary or recommended.