He shook his head. “This can’t be a W&T appraisal. It would start with a letter. Plus that’s dummy text at the bottom. I wouldn’t have given you this.”
“Why are you repeating what I just said? Of course it’s not a real number. But you certainly did give it to me. You brought it over, you said ‘Oh, I’m going to let you read this for yourself,’ you said you were sorry it wasn’t the news I wanted—you even gave me a pep talk about how good I was being to my aunt.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I could have done that.”
She stepped back from him. “Are you a game show host? Is there a hidden camera? Is this Memento? Are you heavily sedated? What are you doing?”
He held out both hands. “I think it’s some kind of a misunderstanding,” he said. He dug in the messenger bag he was carrying and pulled out a sheet of paper. He handed it to her. “This is the receipt I got from you when I paid you for the piece. It says here you sold it to me for fifty dollars, you were transferring ownership of it to me—this is what I’m going by, this is what I remember,” he said, speaking to her slowly and gently, as if she were a frightened toddler.
“This is fraud,” she said, holding out the paper toward him. “This is literally fraud. You can’t do this. What do you think is the point of sitting here and pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about? Do you think I’m going to reach the conclusion that I was imagining it, or that you have an identical twin?”
“I’m at a loss here,” he said. And then he focused his eyes on her a little more intently. “I don’t know how you’d prove that I gave you that. You could have drawn that up as easily as I could.”
She very slowly nodded. “You are a game show host,” she said. “You’re the host of Who Wants to Steal from Little Old Ladies and Go Directly to Hell on a Pair of Sparkly-Ass Roller Skates? You’re an absolute garbage can, you know that?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure you did.”
She looked right at him. “Oh, I did? What does that mean?”
“After I bought this piece from you, completely legally, I had an associate who was going to sell it for me.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. An associate. You mean your friend who might actually dislike you more than I do?”
“Someone stole the piece from him,” Matt said. “Someone took it, saying they were going to help find a buyer for it, and then that person disappeared with it. It’s vanished.”
Laurie nodded. “That’s sad for you.”
“According to my associate, he was supposed to be selling it to a librarian named Nick Cooper. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“I’ve heard of a Mini Cooper. And Gary Cooper. There’s also Alice Cooper. Are you sure your guy wasn’t going to sell it to Alice Cooper?”
Matt crossed his arms. “I know he’s your old boyfriend, and I know you’ve been doing whatever with him this summer.”
She shook her head. “I think we must be having a miscommunication. Are you saying you sold the duck to Nick Cooper? Because maybe you should ask him where it is.”
“He says he never got it. It seems to have gone missing while it was in the hands of a third party.”
“A third party?” she said. “Who?”
Matt hesitated. He didn’t like sharing this part. “I don’t know who.”
“Your associate gave it to somebody who lost it, and you don’t even know who it was? That sounds terrible. You know, it really seems like that’s the person you should be looking for. You should call the police. Tell them everything that happened. Have them call me.”
“This isn’t cute,” he said.
“You know, I have to say, you have really changed,” she said. “You have become a lot more hostile in the time since you defrauded me. I’m not sure I like this side of your personality.”
He pulled his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, such as it was. “I know you have it. I know you took it, and I have a receipt that says it belongs to me. So if you’re smart and you don’t want trouble, why don’t you give it back right now, and I’ll forget this whole thing?”
She had been trying so hard not to yell, but now she was yelling. “Are you fucking serious? Are you threatening me? You’ll forget it? You’re a felon, for fuck’s sake. You’re a thief and you’re a liar, and you steal from people who are grieving. You’re a solid man-shaped pile of decay, and the world has way too many of you, and you’re in no position to make threats.”