A girl who I just can’t believe would kill herself.
What if the police have it wrong?
When I drift off, my dreams are full of murder.
CHAPTER 3
Maggie
December 1, 2015
A crackling buzz startles me from a deep sleep and I lock gazes with twelve sets of eyes. Celine’s porcelain dolls have been watching over me all night. I shudder, deciding that they’ll be going into a box immediately after I have my morning coffee.
Another loud buzz sounds, followed by three shorter ones. It’s the intercom and it’s clearly what woke me up.
“Hold on,” I grumble, giving my face a rub and my body a stretch before I check the collection of clocks to see that I just logged in fourteen hours of sleep. I can’t remember the last time I slept that long.
I hold the chunky yellowed “answer” button down, surprised that this archaic system still works and hasn’t been upgraded. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me.” A male voice fills Celine’s apartment.
“Me who?”
“Hans. I’m here for the appraisal.”
“What appraisal?”
“For the eggs!” His irritation hisses through the speaker. “This isn’t funny, Celine. I don’t do LES in the winter, and you know that.”
Whoever he is, he hasn’t heard the news yet. I could—and probably should—tell him to come back later, or not at all. But maybe he knows something that would be useful to me. Maybe he’s important.
Maybe Hans is the mystery man.
“Where am I going again?” he asks.
“The stairs are on your left. Apartment 310.” I buzz him in and rush to brush my teeth. At least I’m dressed, albeit in the same frayed jeans and rumpled flannel shirt that I flew to New York City in yesterday.
I throw the door open just as “Hans” reaches up to knock, and he lets out a squeal of surprise.
Hans is most certainly not the mystery man. Not unless the mystery man lost all muscle mass and dresses in a peacock-blue suit, complete with a fedora. And is now Asian.
He takes one quick head-to-toe review of me and then sneers. “You’re not Celine.” Bobbing his head up and down and around me, he asks, “Where is she?”
I sigh. “Come on in.”
He pushes past me, dusting the snow off his coat, his boots tracking prints onto the worn parquet floor, his body bringing in a chill with him. With near-black eyes, he scans Celine’s space with fascination, making me wonder if he’s ever been here before.
I take a deep breath. “The thing is . . .”
Hans beelines for a shelf and, producing a magnifying glass and white gloves from his pocket, begins inspecting the fancy eggs sitting on stands, his attention riveted, oohing and ahhing to himself.
“So, how do you know Celine?” I finally ask, more curious than anything.
“We did our undergrad at NYU together. We’ve been friends for years.” A pause. “How do you know Celine?” Again with that head-to-toe scan, like he completely disapproves of me and can’t figure out what I could possibly have in common with her. Celine always did have an elegant style. One that didn’t include torn jeans and wool work socks.
Now that I think about it, I remember Celine talking about a guy friend from school who was as into antiques as she was. “I grew up with her,” I answer dismissively. “And you’re here now because of those eggs?”
“My master’s thesis was on Fabergé,” Hans says matter-of-factly. “I work at Hollingsworth. She’s been trying to get me here to do a formal appraisal for months so she can sell them. I just didn’t have the time before.”
Celine mentioned Hollingsworth to me enough times for me to know it’s a well-established international art brokerage. Not only has it brokered some of the most significant sales in history through both public auctions and private deals, but it has an educational division—Hollingsworth’s Institute of Art, where Celine had been accepted to attend. She planned on applying for a job as an appraiser at Hollingsworth after getting her MA.
But . . . “Sell them?”
“Yes. She figures the money from these will cover her storage fees.” His black eyes take in the shelves. “At least for the first few months.”
I frown. “Storage fees?” I realize I must sound like a complete idiot to Hans, with my two-word questions and clueless stare.
“It’s a cruel world, isn’t it? When a collector has to sell one of her children? Thank God I was able to talk her out of putting them up on that vile eBay.” He spits out the name “eBay” and shudders.
Celine had an eBay store, where she sold the occasional vintage find. But she said she was building her “real” collection, so selling it all doesn’t sound like something she’d do. “Did she say why she was doing that?”
He shrugs. “She needs the money, I guess.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my frustration at a boiling point. Between Celine and Rosa, I’ve never met two more obstinate people in my life when it comes to money. Rosa has always been too proud to take a dollar that she hasn’t earned. Every check I have ever included in a Christmas gift or birthday gift has gone uncashed. Knowing Rosa, it was torn up immediately. When she was diagnosed with cancer and I flew back to stay with her, I had to resort to stealing her mail and paying her bills at the bank before she had a chance to.
Rosa taught her daughter to be just as proud and stubborn.
This must be about covering her tuition, and why she delayed starting her master’s. I don’t know how many times I offered to pay for it, but she refused.
“They’re not real Fabergé, are they?” I ask. I don’t know a lot about art history, but even I have heard about Fabergé. “Aren’t those worth, like . . . millions?”
Hans laughs. It’s one of those high-pitched, fake-sounding laughs that isn’t actually fake. “No, of course they’re not real. But even a well-made ‘Fauxbergé’ egg is worth something. Take this one, for example.” He holds up a delicate blue egg with silver decoration. “Look at the punched-out detail and the enamel and . . .” He goes on, babbling about chasing and single-cut diamonds and color like I understand what he’s saying. “She could get upwards of four thousand for this one. Can you believe that? She bought it for five bucks at a garage sale in the Bronx a year ago. Some clueless people clearing out their dead mother’s attic.”