Antiques Bizarre

by Barbara Allan

  After our very pleasant and lingering meal, we did the dishes together (no electric dishwasher in the cabin—pretty much my definition of roughing it), then retired to the couch in front of the fire to share the footstool again. Rocky joined us, plopping down in his same spot, soon falling asleep and richly snoring.

  To get any unpleasantness out of the way, I ventured, “I don’t mean to spoil the evening, but I do need to bring up a delicate subject—my mother.”

  “That’s a delicate subject?”

  “Actually, yes.” I sought his gaze and held it. “I’m worried that a perfect storm is brewing. You know—circumstances that can make her go off her medication. And, well, her rocker. Not as funny as it sounds.”

  I withheld one piece of incriminating evidence—that she had taken a drink of hard liquor.

  Our shoulders were touching. “What kind of circumstances are ‘gathering’ for this storm?”

  I sighed. “A slowdown in our antiques business, her old haunts changing, friends dying—even the community theater where she directs is on hiatus until summer because of the flood. All these things kept her occupied and, if not completely out of trouble, busy at least.”

  Tony said, “And now I’ve shut off her communications with the police department.”

  I nodded.

  “So…if your mother stops taking her pills, it’s my fault?”

  Noting the tension in his voice, I made my response gentle. “No, obviously not—you’re completely justified, of course. Mother is a busybody, a fourteen-karat meddler. On the other hand, she has been helpful to you in the past with pertinent information.”

  He grunted. “It comes with a high price tag.”

  I took one of his hands. “I just don’t want any drama with the baby coming.”

  I hated to keep playing the baby card, but I did have my own mental health to consider.

  “Brandy, you can’t ask me to tell my people to feed your mother inside police information. I’m all for her feeding her demons with local theater, and your antiques business should pick up soon, now that the floodwaters have receded, but—”

  “You could feed me a morsel. You’re good at feeding me morsels.”

  That made him smile. Point for Brandy.

  “Okay. I can tell you something right now that will be in the media tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you even have a right to know this.”

  “Know what?”

  “Mrs. Mulligan. We got the toxicology report back, and it gibes with evidence at the scene.”

  “She was murdered then?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not likely. There’ll be an inquest, but she died due to an overdose of her own prescription sleeping meds. They were in her stomach, and they were in the pan of broth in her kitchen.”

  “Not rat poison.”

  “No. Very likely suicide, Brandy—she had her wig on, and she certainly didn’t wear that to bed. She knew she’d be found, and wanted to look her best.”

  “Was there a note?”

  “No. But suicides don’t always leave notes—in fact, the stats are the opposite. We talked to several of her friends who’d spoken to her on the phone the morning of her death, and she was very depressed, and ashamed, or…perhaps embarrassed is the word.”

  “She was the one being talked about, and it didn’t feel good, huh?”

  “It would seem. She didn’t answer her phone all afternoon. That was not like her, but calls from her regular contacts—the conduits she used to receive and pass along gossip—she ignored. Coroner puts time of death between eight and nine P.M., by the way. She was gone by the time your mother found her.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t staged?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Then Mother was wrong—she thought a suicide in the midst of murders was too big a coincidence, particularly a second poisoning.”

  “Different poisons.”

  “You’ve made your point, Tony. And it makes sense to me—it must’ve been just too much for Mrs. Mulligan. She liked getting attention, just not that kind of attention. Thank you for telling me.”

  I leaned to kiss his cheek, but he turned so that my lips met his.

  When we finally parted, I whispered, “You know this is a big mistake.”

  He nodded.

  We kissed again.

  “You know this will never work,” I warned.

  He nodded again.

  And folded me into his arms. He had me right where I wanted him.

  The following morning, a bathrobe-clad Mother, going back on her bargain, roused me from my slumber with her usual “Uppy-uppy-uppy!”

  Since it seemed a little early, I muttered, “Unnngh…what time…?”

  “Time to get ready for the funeral, dear,” Mother chirped, joining in with the noisy good-for-nothing yapping spring birds outside my window.

  “But it’s not till ten,” I protested.

  Sushi was burrowing beneath the covers, growling, siding with me.

  Mother loomed like the Statue of Un-Liberty. “You know I want to arrive early to get a good seat.”

  Only my mother would want seats on the fifty yard line at a funeral.

  “So rise and shine and up and at ’em,” she said, then lowered her voice an octave to intone, “It’s not going to be just any day….”

  Never the kind of prediction you want to hear my mother make, and hardly an incentive to get up; and yet I took the bait. “Why, pray tell?” (When my mother starts intoning things in her octave-lower voice, I find myself using phrases like “Pray tell,” and I do apologize.)

  Mother perched on the edge of the bed. “Because, dear, someone very important is not going to show today!”

  “Who’s so important that not being there would be a big deal? Her nephew? Can’t be the priest. He’s officiating.”

  “No! Nothing so mundane. Nastasya Petrova won’t be at her own funeral!”

  A Catholic funeral mass without the deceased?

  Okay, I was awake. I sat up and frowned at her, disgusted with myself that her tricks still worked on me. “Madam Petrova will be a no-show. At her own funeral. All right. I’ll bite. How come?”

  Mother shrugged elaborately. “She’s in Chicago!”

  When I raised my eyebrows, Mother intoned, “On Sunday, the members of her Russian Orthodox church, just a handful you’ll recall, held a private wake in the Petrova parlor. Monday, there was a private service held in the mansion’s ballroom, again just for the Russian Orthodox members, all fifteen of them, and a bishop came in from Chicago to conduct it. And today, at a Russian Orthodox cemetery in Chicago, there will be a graveside service, though I doubt if any of the local members made the trip—they’re all very elderly, you know, and these old people simply can’t get around very well. It was all very discreet, dear, in accordance with Madam Petrova’s reclusive nature. Even the media was unaware.”

  I’d only been awake for a few minutes, but I already had a headache. “Then what is this funeral for?”

  “It’s not really a funeral per se, dear, not technically at least—it’s a memorial service being held at Clifford Ashland’s request. As you know, Madam Petrova had made considerable bequests to both the Russian ‘sister’ church in Chicago and St. Mary’s here in Serenity, where she’d been attending with her nephew, except for the monthly Russian Orthodox service at her own home.”

  “So she’s in Chicago waiting to be buried, and I didn’t even know about it? Who told you?”

  “Oh, I knew all the details way ahead of time, dear.”

  “Who told you all of this, Mother?”

  “Why, Mrs. Mulligan, of course. She knew everybody’s business. Now chop, chop!”

  And she sailed out of the room.

  I threw back the covers, then sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if I’d dreamed that I had a crazy mother and was going to a funeral for a Russian woman who wasn�
�t there because she was in Chicago. But I was awake enough now to know that, unfortunately, it was no dream—this, Brandy Borne, is your life….

  Funny thing was, I could remember vividly what I had been dreaming—usually, it would have faded, the mood lingering maybe, but not the particulars. But this dream I remembered….

  I couldn’t see. I wasn’t blind, just couldn’t open my eyes, as if they were glued shut, and I couldn’t tell where I was going or what was happening.

  What did it mean?

  Oh, well, rise and shine and up and at ’em and chop, chop….

  I showered, dried my hair, slapped on some makeup, then returned to my bedroom to get dressed, where I found that Sushi had hidden one of the shoes I’d set out to wear. I could see it partially showing under the bed—my eyes weren’t really glued shut—but I still went, “Now where is that shoe?” to give Soosh some satisfaction, since she would be left alone yet again.

  My cell phone on the nightstand trilled and I was happy to see caller I.D. report my son’s number.

  “Hey, Jake,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Hi, Mom. Just checking in. You do remember I’m comin’ today?”

  As if I could or would forget—my heart was aching to see him.

  “You bet. When are you coming in?”

  “Late afternoon, I think.”

  “Land or air?” Roger had his own private plane (he didn’t fly himself, just hired on pilots as needed).

  “Air.”

  “Can you call me from the plane, or is that illegal?”

  “Naw, it’s fine. It’s just on the big jets and stuff you can’t use cell phones, and Dad says it’s cool. You want me to call when we’re fifteen minutes out or something?”

  “That’d be great. Can’t wait to see you.” I paused, then added, “I can really use your help to keep Grandma occupied.”

  “Uh-oh—don’t tell me Grandma’s involved in another mystery…?”

  “Afraid so. But please don’t tell your father.”

  “I won’t. He’s pretty touchy about that stuff, ever since I came home and got kidnapped that time.”

  “Yeah. That was a little over the line.”

  We signed off, and I admit to having second thoughts about having Jake drop by at a time when old ladies were dying down the street, even if the police chief assured me it had been suicide.

  Though Mother and I arrived at St. Mary’s an hour early, the parking lot was practically full, irking La Grande Dame, who demanded that I claim the last handicap parking space, which I obediently did so as not to further annoy her, and to avoid hearing about ingrown toenails again.

  Wearing our better clothes—Mother a subdued gray dress and black pumps, me a tailored black pants suit and silver flats—we waited in a short line to enter the church, while above us, a lone, low-pitched tower bell tolled.

  Father O’Brien, draped in his ceremonial black cope, stood somberly at the small entryway, greeting the attendees as they passed on through to the lobby, where some lingered, visiting quietly, but not us.

  I had to move to keep up with Mother, who made a beeline for the sanctuary. But once inside, she halted by the Holy Water Angel, surveying the pews, scrutinizing the crowd that had beaten her here, painstakingly calculating her next move.

  I knew what she was after—a pew from which she could be seen by all and yet see all. It was a conundrum, especially with the now-limited seating. Funny how a recluse like Madam Petrova could draw such a crowd. Of course, plenty of people in Serenity had never had a chance to see her in the flesh. I wondered how many of them knew she wasn’t even here—surely the biggest subject of whispered conversation had to be the lack of a casket.

  Finally, Mother put her two new hip replacements to the test, and I stayed with her as she hurtled down the center aisle, until halting three-quarters of the way down.

  Addressing a middle-aged man seated on an end pew, she intoned in her high-class voice, which was essentially a fake British accent, “Would you mind, terr-ibly if you scooted down? My daughter is pregnant and might have to dash out to be sick, and we wouldn’t want a mishap….”

  Before the startled gentleman could respond, Mother said, “Thank you soooooo much,” and began to squeeze in as he quickly shoved the woman next to him, who in turn shoved over the next person, and so on down the line, like train boxcars bumping each other.

  When I squeezed in, it was a pretty snug fit—that last “boxcar” had to get up and find another pew—but at least we were settled. And I had to hand it to Mother—we had a good view of the pulpit as well as all of the suspects on her list, every single game token in her sights.

  Two rows ahead, clustered together, were our out-of-town Fabergé egg bidders (the surviving ones, anyway): Don Kaufman, Katherine Estherhaus, John Richards, and Sergei Ivanov, attired much as they’d been at the auction. Across the aisle sat publisher Samuel Woods, nervously fiddling with his suitcoat collar, channeling Rodney Dangerfield.

  But our main interest—and that of everyone else in the sanctuary—was the bereaved Clifford Ashland and his wife, Angelica, the couple seated alone in the first-row pew, intermittently dabbing at their eyes with tissues.

  At precisely ten o’clock, the funeral mass began, and it wasn’t long before I remembered how bored I’d been in services during our Catholic try-out. I began having trouble keeping my eyes open, getting no help from how warm it was in the cavernous sanctuary. This time of year, the furnace wasn’t going, but neither was any air-conditioning (if they had it), the purgatory-like temperature due to heat from all of the bodies.

  Mother, however, seemed cool, listening intently to every word, as Father O’Brien read from the Scriptures.

  “You whose rich men are full of violence, whose inhabitants speak falsehood with deceitful tongues in their heads—’”

  I nodded off only to be jostled by Mother as she reached into her copious purse to withdraw a pen and small notebook, whereupon she began to scribble.

  The priest continued. “In a large household there are vessels not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some of lofty and others for humble use—’”

  I drifted off again, until my head suddenly dropped and I reflexively snapped it back with a ladylike snort.

  “But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.’”

  Why was Mother paying such close attention to this droning?

  “Chastised a little they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. In the time of their visitation they shall shine—’”

  While I didn’t fall sleep again, my behind did, anyway the left cheek, and I squirmed, changing positions, and got a reproachful glance from Mother.

  “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.’”

  Finally, the priest came to the end of his Scripture reading, and Mother relaxed, returning her pad and pen to her purse.

  What happened next was a surprising departure as the priest exchanged the typical nonspecific sermon for a bonafide eulogy that commemorated the life of Madam Petrova. Most Catholic theologians would frown at this, but the audience showed their approval with nods, and murmurs of appreciation, at the priest’s kind and personal words.

  When the priest revealed that Madam Petrova had already received a Russian Orthodox funeral, and that her earthly remains were not present, as she was being buried today in Chicago, murmurs of surprise rippled through the sanctuary…and Mother gave me a very smug sidelong glance.

  After the Liturgy of the Eucharist, including communion, we sang a song of farewell—“Jesus Christ Is Risen Today”—and Father O’Brien gave a moving prayer of commendation, followed by an invitation to partake of fellowship, i.e., food.

  As the congregation rose, I didn’t wait for Mother since a) I was starving as we’d skipped
breakfast, and b) Mother would likely dawdle talking to anyone who cared to listen (and many who didn’t).

  I maneuvered in and out of the slow lane, making for the basement, where I discovered that the lunch was being catered by Mimi’s, a popular local bistro. This was yet another departure from the norm, as the women of the church usually provided the funeral meal. Maybe Father O’Brien wasn’t taking any chances, after what had happened a few days ago; or perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to impose on his ladies so soon after the botched auction.

  The food arrayed on a long banquet table seemed fairly rat-poison-proof: crisp lettuce salad bowl, cold meats and cheese platter, crunchy veggie tray, and gooey-frosted white sheet cake. Nothing looked remotely like Mrs. Mulligan’s ill-fated final stew. Still, many of the people filing in for “fellowship” seemed to steer clear of the table.

  Not Brandy.

  I loaded up my plate like a long-haul trucker, making up for the past couple of lean months, then found a table to myself where I proceeded to scarf, keeping one eye on Mimi. I was watching the middle-aged plump caterer (who was obviously fond of her own cooking) for the moment when she’d cut the cake. I wanted to grab a corner piece with its extra frosting.

  But her attention had been grabbed by Samuel Woods, American Mid-West Magazine publisher, food plate in hand, apparently complimenting her on the spread, judging by the way she had turned all knock-kneed and girlish.

  Come on! Funeral’s over! Cut the damn cake already.

  My attention turned to the Ashlands, who had taken a position near the basement entrance to receive condolences from those coming in. Ashland was letting his wife, an attractive brunette in her forties who was vaguely a Peggy Sue type, do most of the talking.

  I’d finished my food, and Mimi still hadn’t cut the cake, so I went off to use the bathroom—my bladder and my appetite clearly had control of preggers Brandy today. When I returned, I spotted Katherine Estherhaus, Don Kaufman, John Richards, and Sergei Ivanov at a table by themselves. I got myself a cup of punch and hovered near a cluster of people nearby, making no conversation, just keeping an eye on this gathering of Mother’s game tokens.