She waved and then buzzed me through. I passed by the cluster of Tiffany lamps and the Japanese gold-lacquer boxes that dated from the Taishō through the Heisei eras, and went to the sales counter, where she stood. A display of highly collectible wristwatches lay between us. If I had been more attuned to the menacing melody that destiny had chosen as background music for what was coming, I might have seen those watches as an omen that time was running out for me.
Instead, I regarded Sharona with a smile that was probably more like a boyish grin, and declared, “You look so Friday,” when what I meant to say was that she looked lovely today.
She smiled that aunt-to-nephew smile. “No one has ever said that to me before, Quinn. What does Friday look like?”
“Well, just like you.” Elaboration seemed essential, so I kept going. “Friday is the best of days, don’t you think? The workweek is done, and Monday is still in the distant future, so for a while we’re free. Of course, I’ve got the day off, and you don’t, so maybe you see the whole situation in a different light. But to me, right now, this week anyway, Friday is great. Friday is beautiful.”
There. I’d actually said it. I had told her she was beautiful, even though she might need a translator to have my meaning properly conveyed.
She cocked her head at me. “You’re really wired, Quinn. How much coffee have you had this morning, dear? My Uncle Meyer was an eight-cups-a-day man and ended up with a bleeding ulcer when he was just thirty-four. Three days in the ICU.”
“Oh, not to worry. I’m a two-cup man. That’s all it takes to charge me up. A good Jamaican blend.” In fact, I didn’t often drink coffee. I favored caffeine-free Pepsi or Coke, but I worried that she would think I was still a boy if I preferred a soft drink to a good cup of joe. I was ashamed of myself for lying, even if about something as inconsequential as coffee. To avoid plunging deeper into the swamp of deceit, I produced the gold coin from a pocket. “Why I stopped by is I found this. I think it might be worth something.”
“I’m mainly a philatelist, though I know a lot about Tiffany, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco. Grandfather is the ace numismatist.”
I so much liked the way “philatelist” sounded when she said it that I wanted to ask her to say it again, but I restrained myself.
“You know where Grandfather’s office is. I’ll intercom him and let him know you’ll be stopping in to see him.”
Julius’s office was at the back of the building, on the first floor. I passed through a storeroom of treasures and found him at his Art Deco desk, which I knew was by Ruhlmann, because he had once told me its history when I asked if I could buy one like it at Ikea. He was examining a cockroach with a jeweler’s loupe.
“What’s that?”
“A brooch,” he said.
“Why would anyone wear a cockroach brooch?”
He looked up from the loupe and raised his bushy eyebrows. “It’s not a cockroach. It’s a very different species of beetle, a scarab. It’s made of silver, tarnished at the moment, and adorned with some of the finest sapphires, rubies, and emeralds it has ever been my pleasure to see.”
“Cockroach, scarab—beetles are beetles. I don’t like bugs.”
“Scarabs were sacred to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.”
“That’s probably why their civilization didn’t last. Look what I found.”
He put aside the jeweled scarab and the loupe to examine my coin. “Where did you get this?”
I told him a version of the truth without lying, leaving out the tarantula because I didn’t want him to tell Sharona how I’d been scared off by a mere spider. “Is it worth something?”
“At retail, from a collector, it would bring forty thousand dollars, maybe a few thousand less.”
I was gobsmacked. I’d been hoping for maybe a hundred bucks. “Holy moly, puddin’ and pie!” I declared, which was something we said at the orphanage to avoid a cruder exclamation in the presence of the nuns. “I guess I better find out who it belongs to.”
Julius frowned. “Belongs to? From what you told me, I’d say it belongs to you. It’s not as if anyone who ever owned that restaurant is still alive. Anyway, if I remember the article you wrote for the magazine, all that property was eventually condemned and taken under the public domain laws.”
“Then the county owns it. Or Washington. There’ll probably be a finder’s reward.”
I’d been standing by the desk all this time. Now Julius pointed to a chair and said, “Sit down. You’re light-headed.”