The Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe Read Free Book Online Page B

that Bjøoïrniger sofas were sure to be the downfall of the next generation of Americans, but I didn’t want to push it.
    â€œI know they don’t really care about all these things,” she said, motioning to her end tables and armoires. “But my children aside,” she said, sighing, “sometimes the thought of selling everything, watching my collection, Adam’s collection, being torn apart and sold off bit by bit . . . well, it might just send me to an early grave.”
    Was seventy-six an early grave? It wasn’t my place to ask. And I didn’t want this elegant woman to actually die. It’s just that I wasn’t allowed to walk away with nothing.
    â€œWe have a very good offer for you,” said Nicole, cutting the small talk. “We’ll of course need to take a look at everything, but I know that the number we are willing to put on the table will exceed your expectations.”
    â€œI need a guarantee,” said Elizabeth, her voice suddenly turning firmer.
    â€œOf course,” we both said in unison.
    â€œAnd I’d like you to set up a trip for my children to attend the auction. They quite like the St. Regis.”
    â€œWill you want to attend?” I asked, writing notes and knowing that Louise would put her entire extended family and their pets up at the hotel if we could sign Elizabeth.
    Just as I was about to stand up and start gently flipping over furniture to find signatures, she shook her head and declared, “All this talk is rattling me. I feel like I’m at a car dealership with Slick Rick and I don’t like it.”
    What? How was this like a car dealership? We were trying to get her to sell, not buy, and who in this scenario was Slick Rick? I caught Nicole’s eye and she mouthed, “You.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll just donate everything to my alma mater, the University of Maryland,” Elizabeth said, starting to smile as she reached for her soda water.
    The University of Maryland! Why? So that frat boys could puke on cushions that once held the posteriors of the American settlers? While I was thinking about our next move, Nicole was playing the friendship angle, telling Elizabeth all about her recent trip to Maryland. She was also peppering her stories with ten good reasons why Elizabeth should sell her estate.
    â€œThe Baltimore Museum of Art has expressed a lot of interest,” said Nicole. “Think about how much of your furniture would return to Maryland if you sold it through us. We have a very high percentage of buyers from museums in the mid-Atlantic.”
    Elizabeth smiled and declared, “Good people come from Baltimore.”
    What did she mean good people came from Baltimore? Had she never seen The Wire? And Edgar Allan Poe was from Baltimore. The original Goth!
    â€œEverything I’m considering selling is in these eleven rooms,” she said, making a dramatic motion with her arm. “Now, I said ‘considering,’ so don’t start mentally writing up your catalogue yet. And no fast talk and shouting out numbers. I like to live a civilized life.”
    Well, it was a good thing I hadn’t done my usual routine of appraising things in a loincloth.
    There were one hundred twenty-seven pieces in the eleven rooms and we started in the very last drawing room, taking pictures of each piece from every angle, including inside the drawers and underneath the legs. We looked at the inlays, the mother-of-pearl detail on some, the tongue-and-groove joinery, ran our hands across the claw-and-ball feet of the Chippendale works, inspected the scallop shell mounts on the Queen Anne pieces, made sure the cabriole legs had no splits in them, same for the pierced back splats on the side chairs. We looked for visible saw marks on eighteenth-century pieces and then almost lost it when we found a companion piece to a side table already owned by one of New York’s most prominent collectors of