He was about to respond when a short, balding, jovial-looking man in a yellow polo shirt and lime green pants came down the walk.

“Agent Shields, I’m guessing,” he called out as he approached.

Connor removed his ID from his pocket and held it up for inspection as the man drew near.

“Mr. Cavanaugh?” Connor asked.

“Yes, yes, let me have a look at that.” He appeared to study it before handing it back. “You’re wondering if I know how to tell if it’s real or not. Well, I can tell you that I do. I have a good friend in your Philadelphia office. Jack Gaffney, you know him?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, he works with the art-theft people. I met him many years ago when he was trying to track down some forged Wyeth watercolors. Damned scandal, that was.” He turned to Daria. “You an agent, too?”

“No, sir. I’m an archaeologist,” Daria told him.

“That so. Well, then come on in. You wanted to talk to me about Elena Sevrenson.” He shook his head with obvious sadness. “Damned fine woman, Elena was. One of my favorite customers. Not just because she bought a lot, and didn’t mind paying top dollar for what she wanted. No, sir. Elena had a real appreciation for the things she collected. Didn’t buy a thing she didn’t love, didn’t matter how trendy or how unfashionable. She bought what she loved. Art and artifacts she respected. Her husband was the same way when he was alive. God rest their souls. I miss them both, and I don’t mind saying it.”

When he held the front door open for them, Daria saw the tears in his eyes. It was clear that Elena Sevrenson had indeed been more than a customer to him. She’d been his friend.

They stepped from the heat of the day into the air-conditioned comfort of the old house. Peter Cavanaugh led them through the front hall and the living room into his office, which was in an addition off the side of the house. An ancient Scottish terrier waddled along behind them.

“Don’t mind Fergus,” he told his guests. “We’re just back from our annual vacation in Maine. It always takes the old boy a few days to get used to things again.”

“You take him with you?” Daria asked.

“Of course I take him. You think I’d kennel my best friend?” Cavanaugh looked indignant. “He just needs to acclimate himself to the house again. I’m thinking he has a form of doggie Alzheimer’s.”

Before either of them could reply, Cavanaugh took a notebook from a desk drawer.

“You were asking about the griffins.” He paged through the notebook. “It took me a while to find the sale, but I did.”

He opened an eyeglass case that was sitting on the desktop and took out the glasses. He put them on and pored over the notebook carefully.

“I thought I marked that page…just give me a minute here…”

“Do you remember if you sold them to Mr. or to Mrs. Sevrenson?” Connor asked.

Cavanaugh peered at him from over the top of the glasses. “I said the dog has Alzheimer’s, not that I did.” He coughed. “Of course I know. I sold them to Mitch back in 1964. Forty-three years ago.” He looked out over his desk at nothing in particular and said, “Can you imagine, it was that long ago? Where the hell have the years gone?”

He thumbed through a few more pages, then said, “Ha. Here it is. Pair of gold griffins. They had arrows in their claws. Never saw anything like them, before or since. They were just spectacular. Mitch bought them for Elena, for their anniversary. They’d only been married a few years back then, but they both had an eye for art, that’s for sure. Always bought the best.”

“How did that sale come about?” Daria asked. “Did you have the griffins, and offer them to the Sevrenson’s, or did he come to you, looking for something special?”

Cavanaugh smiled at Daria.

“You understand that, don’t you? That relationship between dealer and collector.” He nodded. “Mitch came by my shop several times, bought the occasional piece. Delightful man, knew his stuff. We’d been doing business for several years when he came in one day-in the spring, I seem to recall. Said they’d be having an anniversary in the fall and he wanted something very special, something very unique, to surprise Elena. I told him I’d see what I could find.”

“Where did you find the griffins?” Connor asked.

“Dealer down your way, actually. Friend of a friend of a friend. Name was Dragonis. Henry Dragonis. When you said Howe University, that’s the first thing I thought of, what a coincidence that was, that you were down there at Howe, and that he lived in Howeville.”

“Dragonis lived in Howeville?” Connor asked.

“Yes. Seems to me he had some connection to the college there, but I don’t recall what it was.”

“Was he employed there?”

“I don’t remember ever discussing that with him, Agent Shields, but it’s in my mind that there was some connection.”

“Did you know him before you bought the griffins from him?”

“No. I’d heard that he had some very unusual pieces, so I drove down there one afternoon to see what he had.”

“The griffins were in his shop?” Daria leaned forward, enjoying the story.

“No, no. He asked me what I was looking for. I told him what Mitch had said, and that I hadn’t been given a price limit. Well, he thought it over and told me to come back in a week and he’d have something for me. I went back a week later and there were the griffins. I knew they were just what Mitch was looking for. We negotiated a price and I left with them in a cardboard box.”

“Did he tell you where he got them?” Connor asked.

“No, he wouldn’t give that up,” Cavanaugh said. “He just said he had a source, a collector who from time to time had something special to sell.”

Cavanaugh turned to Daria. “Fifty years ago, provenance wasn’t as big a deal as it is now. There were few laws on the books, none of them enforceable unless a piece was out-and-out stolen. For the most part, collectors back then didn’t ask many questions. Up until 1970, there wasn’t even much international interest in the subject.”

“That was the year of the UNESCO convention that addressed the international trade of cultural property,” Daria said.

“Correct. There was no ban on the sale of artifacts back then. So while it was nice to know how a piece came to be placed on the market, it wasn’t against the law to not know, and collectors weren’t that concerned where an item had been.” Cavanaugh met her eyes without apology. “All that has changed, of course, but things were different then.”

“Were you aware that the griffins were from Shandihar?”

“Yes, though I knew almost nothing about Shandihar. I knew it had been some ancient city in Turkey, but truthfully, I knew little more than that. When Dragonis showed me the griffins, he merely referred to them as Turkish. I believe Mitch may have educated himself a bit, sought out some books so that he could discuss the origins of the griffins with Elena, but I don’t know that even he knew all that much.”

“Did you purchase other pieces from this dealer?” Connor asked.

“Oh, yes, several pieces over the years, though nothing else from Shandihar. The Sevrensons were aware that what they had was extremely rare, but they weren’t interested in starting a collection of objects from Shandihar. Mostly what I bought from Dragonis, as I recall, were earlier objects. Mesopotamian, I believe.”

Daria exchanged a long look with Connor.

“Would that have been around the same time, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

“After the griffins, yes. I purchased items from him up until his death in 1998.”

“Do you know if someone took over his business?”

“I don’t believe anyone did. I never heard about it, if so.”

“So his shop just closed?”

“He didn’t have a shop. He did business out of his home.”

“Do you remember the address?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I can look through some old files, see if I can come up with something, but…” He shrugged.