Chapter 6 - The Inventory of Shadows
The first delivery from India Point arrived on a flatbed truck on Thursday morning.
There were four pieces: two mahogany dining chairs with broken splats dating to the Federal period; a low walnut chest with its brasses torn away; and a tall, narrow bureau of flame-grained maple that looked as though it had spent thirty years in an unheated carriage barn.
Keller and two men with dockworker forearms carried them up the narrow stairs, their breath misting in the cold stairwell. They did not speak; they set the pieces on gray moving quilts Megan had laid across the pine floor, nodded once, and retreated down the steps.
Megan spent the afternoon examining the maple bureau.
The top was water-damaged, the hide glue had crystallized into white powder along the dovetails, and someone—probably an amateur with a coarse rasp—had attempted to sand out an ink stain near the center drawer, gouging the wood in an ugly, cross-grain crescent.
It was an insult to the tree that had grown the timber.
She mixed a small pot of rabbit-skin glue on the electric hot plate Julian had provided, the animal smell filling the studio with the rich, pungent scent of old workshops. She used her heated spatulas to lift the loose veneer, sliding the warm, liquid bone into the gaps, then clamping the wood between blocks of soft pine she had wrapped in waxed paper.
By five o'clock, her fingers were sticky with glue and her back ached from leaning over the bench, but the cold inside her chest had receded. Work was an anchor. You could not lie to a piece of flame maple; if your chisel was dull, the wood tore; if your glue was too cold, the joint failed. The wood did not care about Rick Delaney’s debts or Julian Vance’s ships. It responded only to steel, heat, and time.
A shadow fell across her bench.
Megan did not jump this time; the floorboards on the landing had a specific creak she had memorized two days prior.
Julian Vance stood in the open doorway.
He had abandoned his overcoat; he wore a dark gray suit with a charcoal wool waistcoat, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. He looked around the studio—at the clamped bureau, the clean jars of pigments lined up on the window sill, the small cot she had set up in the far corner with Moren’s Welsh quilts.
"You are sleeping here," he said.
"The commute from Newport seemed excessive," she replied, not looking up from her clamp.
"I have five apartments within four blocks of this building," Julian said. "Three of them are empty."
"I like this floor," she said. "The windows don't rattle."
Julian walked slowly toward the maple bureau. He did not touch the wood; he kept his hands where they were, his eyes assessing the repair with the cold, practiced eye of a man who knew what skilled labor looked like.
"The Townsend-Goddard school," he observed. "Newport, circa 1770. My great-uncle found it in a barn outside Exeter. He paid forty dollars for it because the farmer had been using it to store seed corn."
"It’s worth six thousand," Megan said. "More, if I can match the patina on the drawer front without stripping the original oil."
"I know what it is worth," Julian said. "That is why it is here."
He turned his attention to her. In the fading daylight, his gray eyes looked almost silver, reflecting the cold sky outside. He noticed the smudge of yellow ochre on her temple and the bandage on her left wrist where the skin had finally begun to close over the friction burn.
"Mr. Delaney was indicted two hours ago," Julian said.
Megan’s hand paused on the screw of the wooden clamp. "On what charges?"
"Fourteen counts of wire fraud and two of interstate transport of altered commercial documents," Julian said. "The bail was set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His father refused to pledge the house in Cranston."
Megan closed her eyes. For four years, Rick’s family had treated her like an expensive inconvenience, an outsider who was lucky to be tolerated at Thanksgiving dinner. Rick has such a bright future in maritime logistics, Megan. You must be careful not to distract him with your little art projects.
"He called you," she said.
"He attempted to," Julian replied. "My secretary does not put through calls from the county jail. However, his attorney sent a courier with a handwritten letter. Rick appears to believe that I intervened on your behalf because of some personal... predilection."
Megan felt the heat rise into her face again, but she forced herself to meet his gaze. "Did you?"
"Miss Walsh," Julian said, his voice dropping into that quiet, rhythmic tone that made the hairs on her arms stand up. "I do not spend twenty thousand dollars to satisfy a predilection. If I desired a woman, I would not begin by having her scrub grease off an eighteen-inch plane in an unheated attic. I am an underwriter. I saw an asset being destroyed by an incompetent custodian, and I acquired it at a discount."
"I told you," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "I am not an asset."
"Everything is an asset, Miss Walsh," Julian said, stepping closer until the smell of him—cold salt, wool, and that bitter, dark tea—drifted across her bench. "The only question is who holds the title. At present, you hold your own. I am merely the primary lienholder. And unlike Mr. Delaney, I do not foreclose on productive property."
He reached into his pocket and laid a small brass key on the bench beside her gouges.
"The cellar has forty bundles of seasoned white pine from the old mill in Coventry," he said. "It has been air-drying since 1964. If you need blocking for the Townsend chest, use it. Do not buy modern lumber from the yard; the kiln-drying ruins the cell structure."
He turned toward the door.
"Mr. Vance," she called out.
He stopped, his hand on the lintel. "Yes?"
May you like
"Why the flowers?" she asked. "The shop downstairs. You could have turned it into an office."
Julian looked back at her over his shoulder, his face half-shadowed by the twilight. "A street without flowers, Miss Walsh, is merely an alley with a better grade of stone. Goodnight."
