“Third floor?”
“Yeah, turn left out of the elevator. There’s a couple of hand trucks over there, if you need them.” He pointed.
Stone and Dino got hand trucks, and Cantor led the way. They took the elevator upstairs and found the locker, a big one, and it was padlocked. Cantor took a small leather case from his pocket, unzipped it and took out a set of lock picks. After a minute with the picks, the lock snapped open, and Cantor swung the doors wide.
It stood there alone in the locker, in two pieces, wrapped in movers’ blankets and secured with duct tape.
Stone pulled off some tape and looked at the piece underneath. “This is it!” Stone said. “Now be careful with the thing; we don’t want to damage it.”
They got each piece loaded onto a hand truck and relocked the locker. They took the two pieces downstairs in the big elevator and loaded them into Cantor’s van.
“That was slick,” Stone said as they drove away.
“You going to tell Barton we’re coming?” Dino asked.
“Yeah.” Stone got out his cell phone and called Barton’s house.
“Hello?”
“Barton, it’s Stone Barrington. Are you going to be home this evening?”
“Carla and I are just on our way out to dinner.”
“Well, be home in an hour and forty-five minutes, because I’m bringing you a present.” He hung up before Barton could ask any questions. “We’ll surprise him,” he said to Dino and Cantor.
Near the appointed time they turned into Cabot’s driveway and found him waiting for them outside the barn. He unlocked the door, and the four of them carried the two pieces inside.
“Let’s get these blankets off,” Barton said, tugging at the duct tape that secured them.
They stripped off the blankets and set the bookcase on top of the base.
Barton walked around the secretary, looking at it closely, running a hand over the varnish. “Very nice,” he said, “but it’s not mine.”
39
Stone stared at the secretary. He turned and looked at Barton.
“What do you mean, it isn’t yours?”
“I thought I was pretty clear,” Barton said.
“This is the secretary that was locked in Charlie Crow’s storage locker. It was the only thing in there.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Barton said. “It’s quite beautiful, but it just isn’t mine. This piece is a copy of the Newport secretary. It was manufactured in Charleston, South Carolina, sometime between eighteen ninety and nineteen ten. The quality of the mahogany isn’t anything like that of my secretary, and the company built more than three hundred copies over the twenty-year period, more than half of which survive. I could take it down to my shop and get seventy, seventy-five thousand dollars for it. Anybody who paid more would be an idiot.”
“How do you know all that?” Dino asked.
Barton crooked a finger, led them behind the piece and pointed at a brass plate that gave the name and address of the manufacturer and a number, 241.
Dino directed a withering glance at Stone. “So, under your sterling leadership, we stole the wrong secretary.”
“That’s not fair, Dino,” Cantor said. “After all, we didn’t even take all the wrapping off.”
“Stone wouldn’t have known the difference if we had,” Dino said.
“Did I ever say I was an expert on eighteenth-century American furniture?” Stone asked.
“Look, fellas,” Barton said, “just rewrap the bloody thing and get it out of here, will you?”