Antiques Flee Market

by Barbara Allan

  “Good news,” she exclaimed the moment she’d reached me. “The doctor said that I am no longer bipolar!”

  “Really?” I said, amazed, getting to my feet. Was it possible bipolar disorder could leave as quickly as it had come on? That suddenly, one day, a person would wake up and be cured, or anyway in remission?

  In Mother’s case, I’d have to see some hard evidence.

  “Oh, my, yes,” Mother rattled on. “And to think, all these years I’ve been misdiagnosed.” Then she crowed in triumph: “I’m actually schizo-affective!”

  I raised my eyebrows, “And that’s better, how?”

  Mother frowned. “Well, doesn’t that sound more like me?”

  I grunted in agreement. Mother certainly was one effective schizoid.

  “Remember when we did our musical version of Three Faces of Eve at the Playhouse? Now we know why I felt so connected to that role…or is it roles?”

  I couldn’t answer her—I was flashing back to the terror of Mother singing all three parts in the same song, slamming one different hat on after another, like an even more manic Jimmy Durante, to help the audience keep track of the various Eves.

  “Schizophrenia isn’t multiple personalities, Mother. Your one personality is quite enough.” I handed Mother her raccoon coat. “Do you and your doctor have to have so much fun?”

  Mother appraised me with her eyebrows raised above the magnified eyes behind her oversize thick glasses. “I can see that you’re still Little Miss Grumpy Pants. Well, my dear, I don’t have to be subjected to your ever-darkening storm clouds cluttering up my perfect blue sky. You can drive me straight back to the house!”

  “I thought we were going to see Mr. Yeager,” I protested. “To take him the information we found on the internet about his Tarzan book.”

  (And get the money from Chaz that her boyfriend stole.)

  Mother harrumphed. “You can go by yourself, Grouchy…I’m tired of you raining on my parade!”

  Even though Mother’s parade was one tuba player, a tractor pulling a hayrack, and a maniacal clown bringing up the rear, I didn’t relish driving all the way across town to drop her off.

  I gave Mother a smile. “Is this better? I’ve turned my frown upside down, just for you.”

  Mother’s eyes narrowed to near-normal (magnified) size, and she said skeptically, “It looks a trifle…forced.”

  I smiled wider—dangerously wide for a mental health facility, as certainly somewhere around here a closet filled with coats that buttoned in back were at the ready. “How’s this?”

  “All right, all right, please remove that grotesque grin and we’ll go together…. But remember, I have no room in my happy world for a Grinch right now.”

  “Come along with me, Mother, and afterward, we’ll watch our Miracle on 34th Street DVD and eat microwave popcorn till we pop.”

  Now she was the one with the maniacal grin. “Deal!”

  And we trooped out to the car.

  Mr. Yeager lived in a trailer court located in a section of town the locals called South End. If Serenity could be said to have a seedier side, this would be it, distinguished by factories belching smoke, a noisy railroad switching yard, a smelly slough, and (as a result) surrounding lower-income housing. In the past few years, however, a concerted effort had been made by the city and its denizens to improve conditions in this part of town, since it was the first impression travelers arriving from the south got of our little burg. Even so, the bleakness of winter—the newly fallen white snow having already turned to black slush—did not help the overall effect.

  I drove past a small strip mall, then turned at a convenience store to enter the Happy Trails Trailer Park. Mother predicably began to bray, “Happy trails to you, until we meet again,” sounding more like Roy Rogers than Dale Evans, which, in spite of my inner mood, made me laugh. As we headed down the trailer court’s main street (paved and plowed), I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw: attractive mobile homes sitting on spacious lots. Christmas lights and decorated trees twinkled in windows and occasional Santa displays and Nativity scenes enlivened the modest yards.

  Mr. Yeager lived on Lot Number Twenty-one, and we pulled up in front of his un-Christmas-decorated mobile home, a white, single trailer with a stylish bay-front window. Parked in the drive beneath a white aluminum carport was a tan Ford Taurus that indicated the old gent was home.

  Mother and I had just gotten out of our car when I spotted Chaz down the street a ways, walking briskly toward us. She was dressed in black again—leather jacket, jeans, motorcycle boots—and when the girl saw us, she waved the stolen zipper bag and yelled for all the world to hear, “Bran’! Got the money for ya what me boyfriend nicked!”

  Mother, next to me, murmured, “So that’s what this is all about. I do hope you know what you’re doing, my dear, aiding and abetting that urchin….”

  I walked toward Chaz.

  “Wha’?” Chaz frowned as we met in the street, “You’re not ’appy?”

  “Yes, I’m happy. But I’ll be even happier when this money gets back to its rightful owner.”

  I held out a hand, and she relinquished the bag.

  “’Ow will you do it?” Chaz asked, her heavily darkened eyebrows knitted. “Don’t want me boyfriend to get into trouble, yeah?”

  I granted her a smile. “I’ll just say I found the bag in the snow when I left the flea market that night.”

  “Brilliant!” Chaz looked past me. “Where’d your mum go?”

  I turned around. Mother had indeed disappeared. I said, “She’s probably inside already.”

  Mother never stood on ceremony; if a door was unlocked, she took it as an open invitation to walk right in.

  I put the bank bag in the large tote I was carrying, then followed Chaz up the front steps of the mobile home. The girl was reaching for knob when the door flew open and Mother rushed out, shoving Chaz back into me, and pushing us both down the steps. We didn’t fall into the sludgy snow, but it was close.

  “Oy!” Chaz blurted.

  “Moth-er,” I said crossly. “What’s the big idea?”

  She raised a palm like an Indian chief in an old movie about to say, “How.” “Children…you dear children…”

  Chaz and I exchanged “huh” glances.

  “I must prepare you,” Mother announced. She touched a breast with a hand and gazed skyward in search of just the right words. “Mr. Yaeger is dead as a mackerel.”

  Chaz shouted, “No way!” and, shoving Mother aside, hurried back up the steps and into the trailer.

  “That was preparing us?” I asked Mother acidly.

  She shrugged. “Being direct is always the best approach, I always say. Rip that bandage off! No sense lingering on the unpleasant.”

  She was right, so I left her unpleasantness behind and went inside, where I found Chaz on her knees in the small kitchen area, leaning over the sprawled-on-his-back, pajama-clad Mr. Walter Yeager. The girl was shaking her grandfather gently, as if he were only in a deep sleep.

  Holding up her cell phone as she stood poised in the doorway, Mother said, “I’ve already called the police.”

  I put a hand on Chaz’s shoulder. “The paramedics will be here right away.”

  Mother quipped, “Perhaps not…I made it clear the old gent was already dead.”

  Chaz flew to her feet and pointed a black-nailed forefinger at Mother, shouting, “Me grandad said you was a muppet, yeah? Maybe you did this to ’im!”

  Mother’s big eyes blinked behind the big glasses. “Muppet?”

  “A loony bird, innit?”

  I quickly moved between the two. “Mother,” I said, “maybe it would be best if you go outside and wait for…whoever is coming.”

  Mother frowned at me. “What does she mean by ‘a muppet’? Like Kermit or Miss Piggy…?”

  “Mother…outside. Please.” I thought no good would come of explaining to her that a “muppet” meant a crazy person in Brit speak.

  Mother n
odded. “All right, dear, I’ll stand outside and flag down the police car.”

  “Do that.”

  Chaz, her cheeks streaked with black mascara, lips trembling, turned to me and asked pitifully, “Can’t you do anything, Bran?”

  I walked over to poor Mr. Yeager; he sure looked like a goner, but I said anyway, “I’ll try.”

  I knelt and went through the motions of chest compressions—like I’d seen done on TV shows—and hoped I wasn’t doing the man any more harm. (I had once gone to a mall where CPR classes were being offered, but got distracted by a shoe sale.) Thankfully, before I attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the sound of a siren reached my ears, and I ceased my useless efforts.

  Within another minute, two police officers came through the front door of the trailer. The blue uniform in the lead was Scott Munson, tall and gangly, while on his heels came plainclothes officer Mia Cordona, a dark-haired beauty who had once been a close friend of mine; she was in a black tailored suit, and neither cop wore a topcoat, though both their breaths were pluming in the pre-Christmas chill.

  The two officers were well known to Mother and me—and vice versa—and, perhaps understandably, something akin to dread flashed across their faces when they saw us.

  Then Munson barked, “Get out of the way!” and Mia corralled us three women in the living room of the trailer, which was separated from the kitchen by a half-wall.

  Chaz and I sat on a nubby tan couch, while Mother took a rocker that squeaked. Mia produced a small tape recorder from her coat pocket, and began firing questions.

  “And you are…?” Mia asked Chaz.

  “Charlotte Doxley. I…I’m ’is gran’daughter….” Chaz began to sob.

  “She came from England a few months ago to live with Mr. Yeager,” I offered.

  Commotion at the front door halted our interview as the paramedics arrived.

  Chaz, her red-swollen eyes darting to the kitchen, started to rise from the couch, but I held her back gently. “Let them do their job…. Your grandfather’s in good hands, now….”

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  Mia pressed on. “Who found the body?”

  Mother, rocking in the recliner that squeaked, raised her hand like a student in the back of class and piped up, “That would be me, dear.”

  Mia turned hooded eyes toward Mother. “As briefly as possible, Mrs. Borne….”

  Mother, rocking, squeaking, looked shocked. “Why, Mia…I’m always succinct. I never waste words. Brandy, don’t I always say, why use two words where one will do? Why give a big speech when a concise statement will suffice? Why—”

  “That will do and it will suffice,” Mia snapped, adding, “and would you stop that rocking!”

  (I was staying out of this, knowing that anyone who tried to limit Mother’s verbalizing would be off their rocker soon enough.)

  Nonetheless, Mother stopped rocking and gave Mia the same kind of appraising look she gave to an antique she was considering for purchase. “Too much caffeine in the morning, my dear? And I see that you’re still grinding your teeth.” She shook her head, her expression the soul of concern. “Why, when you were a little girl living across the street from us, I though you might gnash those little choppers down to stumps….”

  Now I felt I had to come to the aid of my outmatched childhood friend.

  “Mother,” I said, “Mia is just trying to get the facts straight. You know—like Joe Friday?”

  Mother looked at me as if I had spaghetti sauce smeared on my face. “Don’t you think I know that, dear? And your interrupting is not helping the process. Now where was I? Ah, yes. Brandy and I came to give Walter—Mr. Yeager—some information about a valuable book in his possession, and when we arrived, Chaz was walking toward us from up the road.”

  Chaz interjected, “I was at me mate’s last night. Ben Adams, yeah? ’E ’as a caravan up the road.”

  Mia frowned over her notebook. “A what?”

  “Caravan, miss. A…what you call it, a trailer, yeah?” Then the tears began to flow again. “If I ’adn’t been over there with Ben, I woulda been ’ere for me gran’dad….”

  Mother picked the story back up. “While the girls were talking outside the trailer, I went on in—the door being open—and discovered Walter on the floor in the kitchen. I tried to administer CPR but, well, I’m afraid I quickly came to the inevitable conclusion the poor man had been dead for some time.”

  One of the paramedics entered the living room, and Chaz jumped to her feet. “Me gran’dad?” she asked anxiously.

  The paramedic, a young man with a face made old by his job, said, “I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

  Chaz sank back down on the couch and covered her face with her hands.

  The paramedic went on: “Based on the medication we found on the kitchen counter, death may have been due to a heart attack…but without an autopsy—”

  Chaz cried, “No! I won’t have me gran’dad cut on!”

  Officer Munson had joined us from the kitchen, and he said sympathetically to Chaz, “I understand how you must feel, miss, but the coroner will decide whether or not there will be an autopsy.”

  Mia looked at Munson. “Has he been called?”

  Munson nodded.

  I distracted Chaz by putting an arm around her shoulders and asking, “Would you like to stay with us tonight? You really shouldn’t be alone.”

  Chaz shook her head somberly. “Thanks. But I’ll go back round to Ben’s, yeah?”

  Mia, slipping her small tape recorder into a jacket pocket, said, “I’m done with the preliminary interviews, but there may be follow-up…. Our condolences, Miss Doxley, on the loss of your grandfather.”

  Mother rose from the rocker, which made one last squeak. “I assume that at some point someone will be wanting to take our fingerprints,” she stated, eyes flaring behind the magnifying glasses.

  Everyone stared at her, stupefied. Then Officer Munson asked condescendingly, “And why would we do that, Mrs. Borne?”

  Mother raised her eyebrows. “Why, to eliminate us as suspects, of course!”

  Mia almost smiled. “Suspects in what?”

  “The murder of Walter Yeager, of course! Aren’t you people police?”

  A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

  Flea market vendors can be eccentric and difficult, so tread lightly when handling their merchandise, and don’t insult them by lowballing their already low prices. If you must bargain, be sly, saying, “What a wonderful item! You have a great eye, sir (ma’am). It’s a fair price, just a little out of my price range.” That will work—once in a hundred tries.

  Chapter Three

  Deck the Mall

  I hardly said three words to Mother on our drive home from Mr. Yeager’s. Finding the old gent dead was bad enough, but Mother had outdone herself, upsetting Chaz so much by saying the girl’s grandfather was murdered that Officer Munson had yelled at Mother (and me, guilty by association), demanding we leave forthwith, which is police code for get the hell out of here before you cause any more trouble.

  Officer Munson had escorted us out to my car—not out of politeness, rather to make sure we left—and I took the opportunity to give the officer the bank bag, instructing him to pass it along to Brian, who would know what to do with it.

  Officer Munson had likely been tempted to ask what it was all about, but seemed to know better. His mission was to get rid of us, and he had.

  Actually, come to think of it, I did say three words to Mother on the way home: “You’re a troublemaker.” To which I got no response, neither dismissive nor indignant. Which was bad—that meant Mother was serious in her belief that Mr. Yeager had been murdered, and the last thing we needed right now was for Vivian to go air-Borne on another amateur sleuthing binge.

  At the house, Sushi had piddled in the living room, on the wood floor, fortunately, and not the Persian rug. But the puddle was close enough to the edge of the carpet to send the message that she c
ould have peed on the rug should she have wanted to, and maybe next time she would if we ever left her so long again. Remarkable aim for a blind pooch….

  I put Soosh out the back door anyway, but she just stood on the frozen stoop with her pug nose in the air and her spooky white eyes turned my way, as if to say, “You’re kidding, right?” She made no move to go down the steps, so I brought her back inside.

  Then I trooped upstairs to my bedroom, where I found the little devil had dragged a single shoe out of the closet—a Donald Pliner black suede loafer that I’d waited and waited to get further reduced in the sale room of Ingram’s, until finally on one hot July day I hunted down the manager of the shoe department and complained, “Come on! These Pliners have been out since last winter! Who else is gonna buy suede loafers in the middle of summer?” And he’d discounted them to seventy-five percent off, out of a sense of fairness.

  Or maybe just to get rid of me.

  Anyway, the left shoe in the middle of the bedroom was another message from Sushi meant to inform me that she might’ve turned it into a chew toy with her sharp little teeth and left me with only the right, right? Sushi sure was getting cranky these days…but then, being diabetic and blind got a dog cut a lot of slack around the Borne estate.

  Returning the shoe to its mate in the closet reminded me that the big sales once held in January were now in December, and Tina—my BFF—and I were due for some serious Christmas shopping. I speed-dialed her on my cell at the Tourism Office downtown, where she worked part-time convincing outsiders to visit our fair city, and we set a date for the next day.

  As I left my bedroom, I heard Mother weeping behind her closed bedroom door.

  I knocked gently. “Mother…are you all right?”

  When she didn’t respond, I asked, “May I come in?”