“He seemed really, really nice,” Laurie said. She pointed at her friend. “June wanted me to ask him out!”
“Hey, I didn’t know,” June said. “He was cute.”
“Well, you should be glad you didn’t ask him out, because he’s a complete jackwagon.” Daisy settled back in her chair. “The first thing he told me about himself was that he was thirty-six and he wanted to be a multimillionaire by the time he was forty. I was like, ‘By buying an antiques store?’？”
“It does seem like the long way to get there,” Nick said.
“Apparently, he’d read an article that said Maine was a hot region for tourism and had a lot of potential.” She pulled down the finger-quotes around “potential” in the way you do only when contempt is running hot in your veins. “He showed me this newsletter from some business asshole that said if you go to a distressed area—that’s what it said, a ‘distressed area’—you can buy cheap and soak both locals and tourists by getting into used stuff. The locals would sell you junk for cheap, and the tourists would buy it.”
“That sounds upsettingly familiar,” Laurie said.
Daisy nodded. “There’s a lot of caveat emptor with old stuff, right? You’re not very well protected if somebody buys something from you and they know more than you do about how much it’s worth. If they just have better information, that’s fine. If you don’t know some comic book is valuable and he does, he’s allowed to buy it for whatever you’ll sell it to him for, and maybe he makes a ton of profit, and good for him. But he can’t tell you he’s going to get an appraisal for you and not get it, and he definitely can’t forge documents. That’s fraud. There’s no special exception for people who are lying about old stuff or dead people’s stuff.”
“Sounds good so far,” Nick said.
“I think you should just go confront him,” June said. “Go over there and tell him you know he was lying, you know he forged the thing, you know all about it. Put the fear of God into him.”
“He’d just freak out, though,” Daisy said. “I remember a guy coming in one time and raising a fuss about some baseball jersey Matt bought off him, how he wanted it back, and Matt sold it practically right away. As long as he’s got a remotely plausible claim that he bought it off you fairly, once he knows you’re after him, he’ll sell it, throw up his hands, and say he’s not part of it anymore. You could sue him, but if you really want to get the thing back, that’s not the way to go. It will vanish even faster.”
“Maybe do it nicely,” Nick offered. “Not to be a cliché of a librarian, but just go and ask nicely. Don’t tell him you know he’s a thief, just tell him you changed your mind.”
“Not to be a downer, but if he thinks it’s worth money,” Daisy said, “and he thinks he has the option of keeping it, he won’t just give it back. He bought a ring one time that turned out to be a family heirloom the husband wasn’t supposed to sell, and when the wife came in and said it was a mistake and asked for it back, he told her that if he gave back one thing, he’d have to give back everything. He won’t give it back to you.”
“But you said it was fraud,” Laurie said. “That’s illegal.”
“It’s definitely illegal. The problem is proving it. And it’s hard to prove what he did, given the paperwork. And once it’s gone, you’re not going to get it back.”
“That’s why he took back the sheet where he promised me the appraisal.” Laurie kept thinking about that sheet of paper, that stupid sheet of paper. “I still can’t believe I let him do that.”
“Yeah.” Daisy shook her head. “The fraud is in the fake appraisal, and I don’t know how you would prove he made it. He’ll claim you did, to try to get it back, because you had regrets.”
“I truly can’t believe I was this dumb,” Laurie said.
Daisy shook her head firmly. “Hey, you’re not dumb. He’s just really good at making people feel guilty for hiring him, and then they’re easy pickings.”
“Why do you still work there?” June said.
Melody stage-whispered, “That’s what I keep saying.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “I’ve been suspicious, but I haven’t been sure.”
“So I have to get it back,” Laurie said. “And he’s not going to give it to me.”