Antiques Bizarre

by Barbara Allan

  She beamed. “You do agree, then, dear, that we have a responsibility in this situation?”

  Surprised to hear myself say it, I said, “I do. We’ll not interfere with the police, but we might…might…ask a question or two around town. And now, if you’ll take a seat…?”

  Mother settled at my feet like a child eager to hear a bedtime story, and I proceeded to recap the events of last evening, leaving out the conversation the chief and I had about the murder of Martinette and the poisoning of the stew.

  Also, I admit that I downplayed anything that might seem romantic, although I further admit that I wasn’t sure anything really romantic had occurred. Tony Cassato wasn’t the easiest guy to read.

  And after the nasty coda to our evening, that is, having to call him about Mother finding Mrs. Mulligan’s body, any romantic inclinations he might have had for me might now just be more smoke up his fireplace.

  When I had finished my monologue, Mother began to clap like a trained seal. “Well done, dear!”

  I smiled, basking in such rare praise from Mother on my theatrical abilities.

  But then—like a critic whose review begins well but ends with a wicked barb—she raised a finger. “There are just a few questions I must ask….”

  Uh-oh.

  Here came the Spanish Inquisition: Why hadn’t I inquired further about his wife and child? What was the recipe for the carrot soup? And hadn’t I gotten anything out of him about Martinette’s murder?

  “No,” I said, holding up my hands, palms out. “That’s all you get.”

  Mother pulled herself up off the floor; it was like watching a building reassemble itself, a demolition video run backward. “Get out of my chair, dear.”

  And I was forthwith dethroned, relegated to the hard floor, while Mother sat regally, gazing down at her court jester.

  “We are in a pickle, dear,” Mother said. “We set in motion events that have taken three lives. So there must be no secrets between us.”

  “You were the one who—”

  “Shush! You will share with me now, and in complete detail, every new piece of information Chief Cassato revealed.”

  “You can’t make me do that. I’m of voting age and drinking age, too. It’s my judgment that it would bad for your mental health for me to—”

  A finger settled against her cheek and she gazed ceiling-ward in contemplation. “Of course I could go down to the police station, demand to see Chief Cassato, and tell him how outraged I am that he threw my daughter into the back of his car and drove off with her into the forest…”

  “The forest?”

  “…and apparently had his way with her…”

  “Did not!”

  “…and perhaps the mayor and my friends on the city council would like to hear from me on the subject at the ‘Citizens Speak’ segment of their next meeting, which is televised on public access, as you know, and—”

  And I spilled. All of it, from Martinette’s death being ruled a homicide to the media folks being banished from the crime scene, from the rat poison in Mrs. Mulligan’s stew to the four out-of-town bidders having their hotel rooms (unsuccessfully) searched for the missing egg. Even the obvious deduction that the rat poison had to have been added after I ate my early portion(s).

  Satisfied with both my humiliation and declamation, Mother stood, then strode off to the dining room, not even bothering to grant me a dismissal. I followed, finding m’lady studying her cardboard church and list of suspects, one hand stroking her chin, like a silent movie villain.

  Finally, Mother sighed irritably. “This case is too complicated! There are too many suspects with both motive and opportunity.”

  She sat down dejectedly at the table.

  Mother was displaying uncharacteristic defeat, yet I had a sudden suspicion that she might at any moment regroup and start terrorizing the suspects willy-nilly, thwarting the police investigation, not to mention my own efforts.

  I joined her at the table. “Maybe you’re not looking at this the right way, Mother. Maybe you should go in a different direction….”

  Like away from the investigation….

  Her eyes met mine. “What do you mean, dear?”

  Settling more comfortably in the chair, I asked, “Who are our two favorite mystery writers?”

  Mother raised her eyebrows, but played along. “Well, I would have to say Agatha Christie and Rex Stout.”

  Ol’ Rex “Fibers Under the Nostrils of a Corpse” Stout.

  “Our two very favorites,” I confirmed. “And they both have a lot of suspects in their mysteries. Right?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “But each author goes about constructing his or her brand of mystery quite differently.”

  Mother nodded, and her eyes flared. Nostrils, too. “How true! In Sexy Rexy’s novels, any one of the suspects could be the murderer, right up until the very end, when Nero Wolfe sits his considerable bulk down in his oversized chair and closes his eyes and begins to purse his lips in and out. That’s why I can read those books over and over again! Because I can never remember who did it.”

  “Could be anybody,” I said with a nod. “Agatha Christie, however, designs her stories so that really only one of the seemingly interchangeable suspects has the right motive and psychology to be a killer.”

  “Oh, yes. She’s wonderful.”

  “Dame Agatha loves to put the murderer right under your nose, at the very start—then give him or her a cast-iron alibi, moving that suspect off-stage until the very end, when she reveals that the cast-iron alibi, or lack of motive, is made of Silly Putty.”

  Mother beamed, liking that image; but then she frowned and cocked her head. “What exactly are you saying, dear?”

  “I think we need to concentrate on suspects with no motive and great alibis.”

  This nonsense made Mother’s eyes dance with excitement. “Such as who, dear?”

  I stood, then approached the board and, using the black marker, added two names to the suspect list.

  Mother gasped. “You can’t be serious—Father O’Brien? Why, he was busy tending to the sick!”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The sick, such as the murder victim’s corpse we both saw him bending over?”

  “But Brandy!” She paused, then said emphatically, “He’s a priest! How can a priest be evil?”

  “You want me to refer to some former altar boys?”

  Mother frowned in displeasure. “What a terrible thing to say!” Then she pursed her lips and nodded, adding, “Good point, dear. But your other new suspect…”

  “Yes?”

  “Clifford Ashland? You’re way off base there, darling—he was stuck in the back of the sanctuary.” She pointed to the cardboard church, paused, and then added, “Besides, he has no motive. He is wealthy as sin, and anyway, rumor has it that his aunt was leaving everything to two churches—the Russian Orthodox ‘sister’ church in Chicago, and St. Mary’s here in Serenity!”

  “Which brings us to Father O’Brien again! And as for Ashland, it’s true, he really doesn’t to seem to have a motive”—I cocked my head Sushi–like—“but then, Vivian Borne hasn’t gone looking for one yet, has she?”

  Mother was regarding me with new appreciation.

  “Dear,” she said finally, “I like the way you’re thinking. Don’t ever go back on Prozac. You’re much more use to me not mellowed out.”

  Funny thing: I liked the new me too.

  I especially relished the devious way I was about to send Mother down the proverbial garden path.

  “How should we proceed?” Mother asked. “Rex Stout style, or à la Dame Agatha?”

  “This feels more like an Agatha than Rex, to me.”

  She slapped her knees with her hands. “I wholeheartedly concur! I’ll start investigating Father O’Brien and Clifford Ashland right away.”

  Moving in the opposite direction of the police investigation of the bidders.

  But my smugness caught in my throat when s
he added, “Besides, with Mrs. Mulligan as our third murder victim, it’s very unlikely one of the out-of-towners is responsible. How could they know her habits, or where the house key was hidden?”

  I was shaking my head. “Maybe it was suicide, Mother. Maybe Mrs. Mulligan felt terrible about what her stew did to all those people, and what was worse for an old busybody like her, uh, rest her soul, suddenly she herself was the object of gossip!”

  “Please, Brandy—listen to yourself. We have a death by poisoning, and another murder that was made possible because, as your chiefie put it, that widespread poisoning created a diversion. And now a third victim, the second in the case to die by poison, is a convenient suicide? Would Stout or Christie ever do such a thing?”

  “Sure! All the time!”

  But Mother was ignoring me. “Of course, with the good father in the game, and the loyal nephew, we’ll need two more game pieces.” Mother gestured to the replica church. “What do you suggest?”

  “You decide.” I checked my wristwatch. “I’m due over at Peggy Sue’s in half an hour.”

  And I left Mother rummaging around in the assorted boxes of board games.

  There are mysteries and then there are mysteries, and in my life—despite the bizarre circumstances of the past year that included several murder inquiries—the biggest mystery for Brandy Borne had been that of her own parentage.

  Before the Fabergé auction had gone Humpty-Dumpty, I’d set up a visit with Sis at her home for this morning, so we could finally clear the air on the subject. As readers of my previous books already know, Peggy Sue is my biological mother, a secret which had been kept from me until a few months before, when I received an anonymous letter in the mail.

  A while back I had confronted Peggy Sue, and she’d admitted that she’d become pregnant the summer after high school, just as she was preparing to leave and study abroad. She’d gone off to Paris anyway, returning just before I was due, with a detour to Maine where she stayed with discreet relatives.

  Meanwhile, my recently widowed Mother had been back in Serenity pretending to be pregnant, and what a performance that must have been—never had a “pregnancy pillow” been given a greater workout.

  After I was born, Mother joined Sis in Maine, and they returned together with a bundle that was Brandy, passing me off as Peggy Sue’s new baby sister.

  So we’d resolved that issue—with one major exception being that Mother did not know that I knew she was really my grandmother. For various reasons, Peggy Sue and I had decided that it was for the best that Mother remain Mother and Peggy Sue remain Sis. Never provide Vivian Borne with melodrama if you can help it.

  But recently I’d received another anonymous letter, claiming that Peggy Sue hadn’t told me the truth, at least not the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help her God.

  Before leaving the house, I noticed that Mother had made fitting choices of board game pieces for the two new suspects—Father O’Brien, a white rook; and Clifford Ashland, the wealthy Mr. Green from Clue—placing them in position in the cardboard replica.

  I bid Mother good-bye—she barely noticed—and went out to my car.

  Sis, along with her accountant husband, Bob, and college-student daughter, Ashley, lived in an exclusive subdivision on the outskirts of Serenity, meaning I had to cross the treacherous bypass. But at least there was a light at the intersection now, thanks to a ten-car pileup a while back, and soon I was entering the upper-class housing addition, where the homes ran half-a-mil and up, even with housing prices down.

  At Sis’s mansion (to me it was), I turned up a wide cement drive to a three-car garage, which stood open, revealing Peggy Sue’s white, gas-guzzling Caddie Escalade. Bob’s hybrid was gone—indicating he was working today at his office instead of at home—as was Ashley’s sporty red Mustang, which my lucky niece had taken with her to college.

  Just to be obnoxious, for a few moments I let my battered Buick rumble and belch—recalling the old VHS tapes of Jack Benny shows Mother used to play, where his famed Maxwell would come to a long-shuddering stop.

  Then I Dorothy-ed up the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, where I rang the bell, which was no louder nor any more pretentious than Big Ben.

  Peggy Sue answered right away, her chin-length dark brown hair perfectly coifed, her attractive face fully painted; she was dressed head-to-toe in Burberry plaid, an outfit that could pay a month’s rent for a family of four, and give me eyestrain for a week.

  She greeted me somewhat sheepishly as I trooped by, heading down the gleaming floor hallway, passing a living room on the right and formal dining room on the left that were worthy of an Architectural Digest spread, and on into a state-of-the art kitchen Rachael Ray would kill for.

  There, I settled into a modern, black-lacquered chair at a square glass-topped table with real flowers in the center.

  Sis, her back to me, busied herself at one of the endless marble counters, filling two china cups from a combo espresso-latte machine, then delivered them on matching plates, along with almond biscotti.

  She took the chair next to me, asking, “How are you, Brandy?”

  I answered by opening my small L.A.M.B. purse (couldn’t afford the bigger one) to produce a folded white piece of paper. This I placed in front of her, clearly in a mode of accusation.

  Peggy Sue picked up the note, read it, then slowly put it down again.

  “Well?” I asked. “Is it true? Is my real father a senator?”

  Her troubled eyes met mine. “It’s true.”

  “But you told me my father was a grease monkey you had a one-night stand with, who died in Vietnam in a helicopter crash!”

  “I know what I said.”

  “Well?”

  “Well…I’m sorry. I did it to—”

  “To what? Deceive me?”

  “No. Protect him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Peggy Sue looked pained. She sighed. She looked everywhere but at me.

  I gave her the evil eye. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll start contacting every senator in the state, and every man who has been a senator in this state since—”

  “Not state senator, Brandy. United States senator—Senator Clark? Edward Clark?”

  My jaw fell as if the hinges had come loose. The media was buzzing about the veteran senator from our state making a gubernatorial run, as a prelude to an eventual presidential try. Suddenly, I was a mutt with a pedigree!

  “Does he…know about me?”

  Peggy Sue shook her head. “I never told him I was pregnant.” She looked down. “He…he was married at the time. I’m sure he would have done the right thing, but I didn’t want him in my life. I didn’t want an abortion. I wanted you.”

  Wasn’t that flattering?

  “Did he take advantage of you?” Dirty old man—or dirty young man, back then.

  “No! The attraction was mutual.” She paused, then went on. “The summer after high school, I worked for his campaign—it was his first election, and we grew…close.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Sis took deep breath, let it out slowly. “I guess I was lonely and starry-eyed, being around such a handsome, powerful man. I’d just broken up with…anyway…and of course Mother was…difficult. I had dreams of marriage, even though he was already…”

  The sentences just wouldn’t come together for her.

  Finally she said, “Brandy, I was just a stupid kid.” But there were tears in her eyes when she added, “I really did love him….”

  I was seeing Peggy Sue in a new light—vulnerable and sad, compassionate and caring. She had made mistakes—like me.

  “I’m sorry, Brandy, that I made up that other story—please don’t hate me for it. I didn’t want Edward’s career to be ruined. I still don’t.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But that did happen a long time ago.”

  “It could still hurt him. I was only seventeen, although I became of-age a month later.”

  Oo
ps—even a long-ago whiff of statutory rape could feed the twenty-four-hour news cycles for a good long time….

  Peggy Sue snatched up the note. “Who’s been sending these awful things?” I wasn’t used to seeing that much anger on her face. “First, telling you that I’m your mother, and now this!”

  I smirked. “Who do you think? Connie Grimes.”

  Connie Grimes—nastiest of Peggy Sue’s snotty gal pals, with whom I’d had several run-ins lately. It made sense that that mad cow would go after her revenge.

  Peggy Sue was shaking her head, the perfect hair swinging. “But how would Connie know?”

  I shrugged. “Where was she thirty years ago? She didn’t work on the campaign with you, did she?”

  She frowned. “Yes, she did. But—”

  Something was forming in Sis’s mind, but then she shook her head. “I don’t know. If it is her, I could strangle that witch!”

  I tried to get the conversation back on track.

  “About Mother,” I said. “We agreed before that I didn’t want her to know that I knew about you….”

  “And now you don’t want her to know that you know about him.” Peggy Sue nodded. “I agree it’s for the best.”

  “Let’s maintain the status quo.”

  “Let’s.”

  She warmed up our cold coffee, which we sipped as our conversation turned to more pleasant subjects, like how my pregnancy was going, and what courses Ashley was taking at college, avoiding any discussion of the botched bazaar.

  When we’d run out of things to say, Peggy Sue gathered up the cups and leftover biscotti, then walked me to the front door.

  We stood out on her expensive inlaid stone stoop, in the cool, spring air, and Sis said, “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can keep Mother from attending Nastasya Petrova’s funeral….”

  “Not a chance.”

  Sis pursed her pretty lips. “I can’t believe she’s in the middle of a murder again. How can that keep happening?”

  “Just lucky I guess.”

  “You have to rein her in. You have to promise me that. Is she taking her medication?”

  “Yes, but she’s pretty keyed-up over all this. Don’t worry, Sis—I’ll do what I can to keep her under control.”