First Gravedigger Read Free Page A

dead white. Old Meissen was carefully decorated, and this piece certainly was. Ornamental lace border on Leda’s gown, a few scattered flowers in her hair. The feathering carefully detailed on the swan’s powerful outstretched wings. The colors were okay—no maroons or yellow greens, which were nineteenth-century introductions. So far everything checked out.
    Then I saw. Leda’s eyes—they were blue. All the eighteenth-century Meissen figures had brown eyes.
    â€œNew Meissen,” I admitted, and put the figurine back on Speer’s desk.
    Speer pushed the photocopy of my evaluation toward me. “Do you see one word about eye color in there?”
    He hadn’t even looked at the paper; that meant he already had a copy. Telling me to bring in my evaluation—that was a ploy to put me on the defensive. I read through what I’d written and said, defensively, “You know these reports can’t mention everything about a piece. Mostly they’re concerned with matters that might be considered suspect.”
    â€œAnd blue eyes aren’t suspect?” Speer snorted. “Good god, Sommers, even the rawest neophyte knows to look for brown eyes in old Meissen.”
    I narrowed my own brown eyes and studied him. He was absolutely right: eye color was one of the first things you look for. It was such an obvious giveaway. So obvious, in fact, that even a furniture man knew to look for it. If I hadn’t mentioned eye color in my evaluation, it was because there’d been nothing unusual to mention. Which could mean only one thing: Speer had switched pieces on me.
    He said nothing, watching me figure it out. Daring me to accuse him, to provide him with an excuse to—to do what? Careful .
    I decided. “I’m sorry, Mr. Speer, I don’t see how I could have overlooked that. Porcelains aren’t really my field—if you’ll remember, I was just helping out one day when Wightman was sick.”
    â€œNo excuse, Sommers. I expect catholicity in my agents.”
    â€œWell, then, I probably rushed the evaluation. I’ve had an unusually high number of them this past month. Not to mention cataloguing the Alice Ballard estate.”
    Speer’s eyes were gleaming. “Are you saying you’re overworked?”
    Enough was enough. “Yes, I am. The Ballard estate should take precedence over all these other evaluations, but I’ve had one distraction after another to keep me from finishing the job.”
    â€œHow far are you from finishing?”
    â€œEnd of the week. It’d be finished now if I could have given it my full attention.”
    â€œThis week.” He seemed to think it over. “Sommers, if you can’t finish it this week, I’ll put someone else on it.”
    I nodded. “I could use some help.”
    â€œYou don’t understand. I’ll put someone else in charge.”
    No fun in tightening the screws if the guy you’re screwing doesn’t know about it. I got the message, all right. I nodded curtly to Speer and got up to leave.
    He pulled Wightman’s trick of letting me get all the way to the door before throwing his last bombshell. “By the way, Sommers, something a little more in your line has come in. A Mrs. Percy has what she calls an ‘early American’ writing table she wants to sell. She says it’s two hundred years old. Run out and take a look at it, will you? June will give you the address. I’d like an evaluation by five this afternoon.”
    Look at this writing table. Finish that catalogue. Jump through this hoop. As I sleepwalked out I could hear Speer telling June to get Wightman on the phone.
    June handed me an address card without looking up from the phone. Mrs. Percy of the ‘early American’ writing table lived in Beaver Falls. An hour to drive there, another hour to find the house and make the evaluation, an hour to drive back, allow for traffic, then write