Antiques Bizarre
Page 21
Knowing how quickly her illness could kick in, I went upstairs to get her back on track.
She was snuggled under the covers, but not yet asleep.
“I brought your pill and some water,” I said from the doorway. “You missed a couple days.”
“No, dear,” she said, her voice emphatic. “I did not ‘miss’ any pills. I’ve decided not to take them anymore.”
Then she told me “good night,” and rolled over with her back to me.
I rushed downstairs and got Peggy Sue on the phone.
“Sis,” I said, “we have got to talk about Mother.”
“That’s funny—I was just going to call you about your father.”
“Why, did you and Bob get out the Ouija board again?”
“No, not Jonathan Borne—I mean, your biological father, Edward Clark.”
“Oh.” The esteemed United States senator. “What about him?”
“I just heard from him, and it seems he, too, recently received one of those nasty anonymous letters.”
“You mean—telling him about you…having me?”
“Yes. Can you come over tomorrow morning so we can hash this out? And what was it you wanted to tell me about Mother?”
“It’ll wait till tomorrow morning, Sis.”
After I hung up, I could only wonder what the senator’s reaction would be to his “new” daughter—thirty-one-year-old, divorced, pregnant, unemployed Brandy. And where would we go from there?
But more important, how many more lives would be disrupted or even ruined by that anonymous letter writer? Couldn’t somebody do something about it?
Tune in tomorrow—same batty time, same batty channel.
A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip
Auctioneers have the power to reject any bid that slows down or disrupts the bidding process. More than once, Mother has been thrown out of auctions when she insisted on topping the last bid by one dollar.
BARBARA ALLAN
is the joint pseudonym for husband-and-wife mystery writers Barbara and Max Allan Collins.
BARBARA COLLINS is one of the most respected short story writers in the mystery field, with appearances in over a dozen top anthologies, including Murder Most Delicious, Women on the Edge, Deadly Housewives and the bestselling Cat Crimes series. She was the coeditor of (and a contributor to) the bestselling anthology Lethal Ladies, and her stories were selected for inclusion in the first three volumes of The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories.
Two acclaimed hardcover collections of her work have been published—Too Many Tomcats and (with her husband) Murder—His and Hers. The Collins’s first novel together, the Baby Boomer thriller Regeneration, was a paperback bestseller; their second collaborative novel, Bombshell—in which Marilyn Monroe saves the world from World War III—was published in hardcover to excellent reviews.
Barbara has been the production manager and/or line producer on various independent film projects emanating from the production company she and her husband jointly run.
MAX ALLAN COLLINS, a five-time Mystery Writers of America “Edgar” nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, has been hailed as “the Renaissance man of mystery fiction.” He has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations for his historical thrillers, winning twice for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991), and was presented the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Eye.
His other credits include film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including Air Force One, In the Line of Fire, and the New York Times bestsellers Saving Private Ryan and American Gangster, which won the Best Novel “Scribe” award from the International Association of Tie-in Writers.
His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award-winning DreamWorks feature film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law, directed by Sam Mendes. A nominee for both the Eisner and Harvey awards (the “Oscars” of the comics world), Max has many comics credits, including the “Dick Tracy” syndicated strip (1977–1993); his own “Ms. Tree” “Batman” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” based on the hit TV series, for which he has also written six video games and an internationally bestselling series of novels.
An acclaimed and award-winning independent filmmaker in the Midwest, he wrote and directed the Lifetime movie Mommy (1996) and three other features, including Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life (2005). His produced screenplays include the 1995 HBO World Premiere The Expert and The Last Lullaby (2008) from his novel The Last Quarry.
“BARBARA ALLAN” live(s) in Muscatine, Iowa, their Serenity-esque hometown. Son Nathan graduated with honors in Japanese and computer science at the University of Iowa and works as a translator of Japanese to English in the video-game industry.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th St.
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2009940495
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5749-9