storage unit. As for the Barbours: I wasn’t all that anxious to speak to Platt either, but to my relief it was Kitsey who answered.
“We’re going to have a dinner for you,” she said immediately.
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t we tell you? Oh—maybe I should have phoned! Anyway, Mum loved seeing you so much. She wants to know when you’re coming back.”
“Well—”
“Do you need an invitation?”
“Well, sort of.”
“You sound weird.”
“Sorry, I’ve had the, uh, flu.”
“Really? Oh my goodness. We’ve all been perfectly fine, I don’t think you can have caught it from us—sorry?” she said to an indistinct voice in the background. “Here… Platt’s trying to take the phone away. Talk to you soon.”
“Hi, brother,” said Platt when he got on the line.
“Hi,” I said, rubbing my temple, trying not to think how weird it was for Platt to be calling me brother.
“I—” Footsteps; a door shutting. “I want to cut right to the chase.”
“Yes?”
“Matter of some furniture,” he said cordially. “Any chance you could sell some of it for us?”
“Sure.” I sat down. “Which pieces is she thinking of selling?”
“Well,” said Platt, “the thing is, I would really not like to bother Mommy with this, if possible. Not sure she’s up for it, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I mean, she’s just got so much stuff… things up in Maine and out in storage that she’ll never look at again, you know? Not just furniture. Silver, a coin collection… some ceramics that I think are supposed to be a big deal but, I’ll be frank, look like shit. I don’t mean figuratively. I mean like literal clods of cow shit.”
“I guess my question would be, why would you want to sell it.”
“Well, there’s no need to sell it,” he said hastily. “But the thing is, she gets so tenacious about some of this old nonsense.”
I rubbed my eye. “Platt—”
“I mean, it’s just sitting there. All this junk. Much of which is mine, the coins and some old guns and things, because Gaga left them to me. I mean—” crisply—“I’ll be frank with you. I have another guy I’ve been dealing with, but honestly I’d rather work with you. You know us, you know Mommy, and I know you’ll give me a fair price.”
“Right,” I said uncertainly. There followed an expectant, endless-seeming pause—as if we were reading from a script and he was waiting with confidence for me to deliver the rest of my line—and I was wondering how to put him off when my eye fell on Lucius Reeve’s name and number dashed out in Hobie’s open, expressive hand.
“Well, um, it’s very complicated,” I said. “I mean, I would have to see the things in person before I could really say anything. Right, right—” he was trying to put in something about photos—“but photographs aren’t good enough. Also I don’t deal with coins, or the kind of ceramics you’re talking about either. With coins especially, you really need to go to a dealer who does nothing but. But in the meantime,” I said—he was still trying to talk over me—“if it’s a question of raising a few thousand bucks? I think I can help you out.”
That shut him up all right. “Yes?”
I reached under my glasses to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Here’s the thing. I’m trying to establish a provenance on a piece—it’s a real nightmare, guy won’t leave me alone, I’ve tried to buy the piece back from him, he seems intent on raising a stink. For what reason I don’t know. Anyway it would help me out, I think, if I could produce a bill of sale proving I’d bought this piece from another collector.”
“Well, Mommy thinks you hung the moon,” he said sourly. “I’m sure she’ll do whatever you want.”
“Well, the thing is—” Hobie was downstairs with the router going, but I lowered my voice just the same—“we’re speaking in complete confidence, of course?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t actually see any reason to involve your mother at all. I can write out a bill of sale, and back-date it. But if the guy has any questions, and he may, what I’d like to do is refer him to you—give him your number, eldest son, mother recently bereaved, blah blah blah—”
“Who is this guy?”
“His name is Lucius Reeve. Ever heard of him?”
“Nope.”
“Well—just so you know, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he knows your mother, or has met her at some point.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. Mommy hardly sees anyone these days.” A pause; I could